DRUG-FIGHTING MOM, 5 CHILDREN DIE IN FIRE

Angela Dawson had been trying for months to keep the drug dealers off the
steps of her East Baltimore rowhouse. She cursed them and badgered them
down the block; they threw a rock through her window. She called police;
somebody tossed two Molotov cocktails into her kitchen.

The room was scorched, yet Dawson and her family refused to leave.

Wednesday morning, though, somebody came at them again. According to
police, one of the men who had repeatedly clashed with Dawson crept up her
darkened street, intent on finishing the job. Within moments, a fireball
ripped through the three-story structure, killing the 36-year-old mother
and five of her six children.

The youngest, twins, were 9. A 17-year-old daughter was not staying at home
at the time of the fire.

As firefighters and neighbors laid flowers at the remains of the rowhouse
Thursday and Mayor Martin O'Malley called the violence "one of the most
barbaric acts in our city's recent history," police charged Darrell Brooks,
21, with six counts of first-degree murder and arson.

That count could grow. Dawson's husband, Carnell Dawson Sr., a 43-year-old
construction worker, escaped through an open window, but barely. He
remained in critical condition at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Thursday with second- and third-degree burns on more than half his body.

The police department's conclusion confirmed what Angela Dawson's relatives
and friends concluded immediately. They all knew of her battles this year,
her efforts to shield her children and somehow hold the line in her
decaying community. Between June and October, she had called 911 more than
50 times to report drug dealing.

"Her life this year was pretty much a hell because of the drug dealers and
hoodlums," said her brother, John Harrington Jr. of White Marsh, Md. "It
became overwhelming. She got so she was afraid for her life."

Dawson's mother, Donnell Golden, believes six lives could have been saved
had police paid more attention to her daughter's complaints.

The suspect, Brooks, lives across the street.