Death of a driver on a downtown street brings Baltimore’s long-running squeegee worker debate to a head

BALTIMORE — For whatever reason, it all came to a head on Thursday afternoon at one of Baltimore’s most inviting intersections: Go one way to the city’s showpiece harbor, the other to its bandbox of a baseball park. Head north to downtown, or south to the redbrick, row house-scaled charm of Federal Hill.

But beneath the surface of these postcard vistas, decades of a slow-burning anger in the city found its ignition on Conway and Light streets. A driver got out of his car with a bat to confront a group of squeegee workers, one of who police said fatally shot him and fled the scene.

“It was horrible and horrendous,” said Kaye Whitehead, a Loyola University Maryland professor and WEAA-FM talk show host. “It was shocking, but not surprising.”