Jessica Gallagher

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.