Jessica Gallagher

Baltimore

Staff Photographer at The Baltimore Banner

Staff Photographer @BaltimoreBanner ▪️Insta📸: jessicagallagherimagery ▪️she/her▪️

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Articles

They started treatment in Baltimore. Opioids and overdoses followed.

Dec 20, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Alissa Zhu |Jessica Gallagher |Meredith Cohn

Amanda Vlakos had been living for years in rat-infested abandoned buildings in Baltimore, fighting an addiction to opioids, when she learned of a possible escape: a drug-treatment program that offered patients free housing. Sober when they arrived, Vlakos and her boyfriend were placed in a barely furnished two-bedroom apartment with a succession of strangers who often used drugs. She relapsed after a month. Roommates kicked in doors, flooded the bathroom and sold drugs out of their unit.
On Devon Wellington’s Way, a witness and a mother remember an overdose victim

Jun 13, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jessica Gallagher

Lavard Lewis sat on the steps of his home on Etting Street in West Baltimore with his wife in 2021. He saw a man get into a truck and lock the doors, and suspected the man was using drugs. He told his wife he wasn’t going to get involved, and they went inside to continue their day. He soon saw emergency workers arrive and attend to the man, who had overdosed and died. His name was Devon Wellington.
Baltimore's Overdose Crisis

Jun 11, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Nick Thieme |Alissa Zhu |Jessica Gallagher |Adam Willis

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one. Many are dying from fentanyl and other drugs. The hardest-hit are Black men in their 50s to 70s, a group that Baltimore’s changing economy left behind. The city was once hailed for its response to addiction. But as fentanyl flooded the streets and officials shifted priorities, deaths hit unprecedented heights. Councilman Mark Conway plans to introduce legislation on Monday to convene a hearing in late June.
Poppleton community wants a say on what’s next after city ends deal with developer La Cité

Jun 6, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jessica Gallagher |Hallie Miller

This week, Baltimore City said it was unwilling to wait any longer on the redevelopment that New York developer La Cité has been promising for almost 20 years in West Baltimore’s Poppleton neighborhood. In all that time, La Cité has completed only one project, a 252-unit apartment complex, on the up to 14 acres of land it was supposed to redevelop. A long-promised grocery store hasn’t materialized, nor has the pledge to reinstall a sense of community to a majority-Black neighborhood in distress.
Baltimore's overdose crisis hits older Black men hardest: 5 takeaways

Jun 2, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Alissa Zhu |Nick Thieme |Jessica Gallagher

Over the past six years, Baltimore has endured one of America’s deadliest drug epidemics. Fatal overdoses have fallen surprisingly hard on one group: Black men currently in their mid-50s to early 70s. While just 7 percent of the city’s population, they account for nearly 30 percent of drug fatalities — a death rate 20 times that of the rest of the country. The reporters examined the city’s response to rising overdose deaths as part of The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship.
5 takeaways from Baltimore’s overdose crisis: Fentanyl, deaths, statistics

May 23, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Alissa Zhu |Nick Thieme |Jessica Gallagher

Baltimore has become the center of the worst drug crisis ever seen in a major American city, an examination by The New York Times and The Baltimore Banner has found. The city’s death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly double that of any other large city — a fact not known by several top leaders, including the mayor and the deputy mayor, who used to lead the city’s Health Department. COUNTY (CITY) DEATHS PER 100,000 Baltimore 170 Knox, Tenn.
Stories From Baltimore’s Overdose Crisis

May 22, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Alissa Zhu |Jessica Gallagher |Nick Thieme

Signs of loss are scattered across Baltimore. Sprays of flowers in front of a boarded rowhouse. Makeshift memorials in the lobby of an apartment building or the therapy room of an addiction treatment program. Each a statement: Someone who was loved died here. People in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major American city, a New York Times and Baltimore Banner examination has found. The epidemic has claimed almost 6,000 lives in the past six years.
Jaylon Ferguson's fentanyl overdose cut his legacy short: Ravens player rose from Louisiana

May 22, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Alissa Zhu |Jessica Gallagher |Nick Thieme

Growing up in a small, football-obsessed town in Louisiana, Jaylon Ferguson knew what he wanted to do with his life. He wrote his goals in permanent marker on the wall of his childhood home: Make the all-state team. Graduate high school. Go to college. Make it to the NFL. In 2019, he checked the last item off his list when he was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. His coach at Louisiana Tech University, where Ferguson had broken collegiate records, held a watch party that night.
Key Bridge collapse has local truck drivers overworked and fearful

Apr 22, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Brenna Smith |Jessica Gallagher

Did you see what happened? Are you ok? Were you on the bridge? After taking his first night off in 40 days, Mandel Brown awoke March 26 to a flurry of texts and missed calls. A Maryland native and newly licensed trucker, Brown’s GPS showed that he had been on track to arrive at the Key Bridge at what turned out to be roughly the same time it collapsed. The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
One of the last drivers to cross the Key Bridge, got off right before it collapsed

Mar 29, 2024 | thebaltimorebanner.com | Abby Zimmardi |Jessica Gallagher

It was business as usual for Larry Desantis as he made his daily commute over the Francis Scott Key Bridge. He clocked out from his bakery job in Pasadena at 1:18 a.m. Tuesday and drove to Herman’s Bakery in Dundalk where he is the head baker. While on the bridge,he slowed down to watch out for the highway workers, heavily focused on staying in between the construction cones. As he drove, he didn’t notice a ship veering toward the bridge, and he didn’t notice the black smoke billowing out of it.