ASHES AND TEARS IN LOST BATTLE OF DRUG WAR

BALTIMORE, Oct. 17 - Inside the blackened shell of a home at 1401 East
Preston Street is one of the saddest stories a city can tell.

It begins with Angela Dawson, a neighborhood crusader and mother of six,
taking a stand against drugs.

It ends with Mrs. Dawson and her five youngest children burning to death in
an engulfed bedroom and a young man from down the street in jail.

For her work fighting crime and tipping off the police, Mrs. Dawson, 36,
and her family were killed Wednesday morning by a drug pusher who set their
home on fire, the authorities said. Mrs. Dawson's husband narrowly escaped,
at least for now. The Dawsons had been threatened many times, and two weeks
ago a firebomb was tossed through their window.

"It got to the point where Angela didn't want to go outside," said her
brother, John Robert Herrington Jr. "She'd say to me, `John, I'm scared,
I'm scared, John. They're going to get me.' "

Here, in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of one of America's most
violent cities, people are used to sidewalk memorials marking where their
sons and daughters fell. Drugs and guns have emptied many bedrooms. But
nobody has ever seen nearly an entire household, with five children, ages 9
to 14, wiped out at once.

Baltimore officials responded quickly, making an arrest, meeting with
neighborhood residents and holding an emotional news conference. Meanwhile,
a mountain of teddy bears rose up from the cracked concrete outside the
Dawsons' home. A charred smell stung the air. Even the toughest-looking
characters in the neighborhood seemed moved, as young men with cornrows and
gold teeth stuffed wads of cash into a water jug someone left outside the
home marked: "For the Dawson Family."

As more and more residents poured into the streets grief hardened into anger.

"Why y'all bothering us when you didn't do nothing to protect a mama and
her babies?" screamed Monique Tater, a neighbor, at the wall of police
officers guarding the ruined home. "Where were you before?"

Many neighbors want to know why, if the police knew that the Dawsons were
in danger, they had not done more to protect them.

City officials say they tried.

The police commissioner, Edward Norris, said his office recommended that
the family move, but, he said, "they said they wouldn't be driven out of
the neighborhood by drug dealers."

Police also said they had increased patrols of the neighborhood since a
firebombing of the Dawson home on Oct. 3, an unsolved crime that was a
clear harbinger of the devastating fire on Wednesday.

"The outrage should not be frankly at the government," Mr. Norris said, but
at "the people that have poisoned our city and our corners."

Mr. Norris pointed to the swift arrest of Darrell Brooks, 21, who lives
just a few houses down from the Dawsons, and was charged this afternoon
with six counts each of first-degree murder and arson. Neighbors said he
was friends with a drug dealer whom Mrs. Dawson testified against earlier
this month.

Residents here vowed not to be intimidated by what happened. But reality is
different.

"Who's going to squeal now?" said Lucretia Coates, the principal of the Dr.
Bernard Harris Elementary School, which four of the Dawson children
attended. "I got four little desks empty in my school. Why wouldn't that
intimidate you?"

In a Baltimore burn unit, Carnell Dawson Sr., 43, clings to life. Husband
and father, he escaped the fire, leaping from a second-story window. Over
half his body is badly burned. He remains unconscious.

"I can only imagine the world he will return to," said Donnell Golden, Mrs.
Dawson's mother. "If I was him, I wouldn't even want to wake up."

Angela Dawson, known as Angel, grew up not far from where she was killed.
The ghetto of northeast Baltimore was all she ever knew, dropping out of
high school in the 10th grade, having a baby at 18 and working a few jobs
here and there until she got married 12 years ago to Mr. Dawson, a
construction worker.

By all accounts she was a great mother.

"She used to come to the school and eat lunch with her kids," said Mrs.
Coates, the principal.

Neighbors said Mrs. Dawson cut a lively figure, strutting down the street
in a red bandana and bright red lipstick, riding bikes, playing ball in the
street with her boys.