On a bright, hot July morning, about a dozen people in front of the CVS store at the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues in Baltimore started swaying rhythmically side to side, recalled Dawn, a longtime user of crack cocaine and opioids who sometimes hangs out in the area.
Four months later, as the soft daylight of a cool November afternoon gave way to dusk, Dawn, standing in an empty lot adjacent to an alley off North Avenue, mimicked what she saw during the July 10 mass overdose in the Penn North neighborhood.
After a handful of sways, “They just fell over, like a domino,” Dawn said…