She also was a patient at the Johns Hopkins Kennedy Krieger Institute, which treats developmentally challenged children. She said Laura had been diagnosed with autism and attended special needs classes at Edgecombe Circle Elementary School in Park Heights, where she was in the fourth grade. The girl's mother, Theresa Bolyard Newton, 35, couldn't bear to look at the house and remained secluded yesterday at her pastor's house in Northeast Baltimore. "Laura Ashley Newton, from Rena, you are in a better place," read one note, scrawled on a piece of cardboard covering a window. Laura, we will miss you." Tacked to the scarred rowhouse walls were remembrances and cards. The structure's front was turned into a memorial - stacks of teddy bears and other stuffed animals were piled high alongside burned furniture, a water heater and broken toys on the sidewalk out front.Ī white bedsheet hung from the second story with a large, handwritten epitaph: "2-22-89 - 11-28-99. Yesterday, Laura's friends and relatives stood outside the charred home in the 500 block of South Gilmor St. Laura died clutching a neighbor's hand through the bars. The bars kept Laura from getting out, and kept neighbors from getting in. That gated window created a death trap Sunday afternoon, when fire raced through the narrow home. So her mother put up metal bars to keep her daughter safe. She liked to talk about school.īut the 10-year-old autistic child also liked to sneak out of her second-story bedroom window, climb down from a small porch roof and run around the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood. She liked to sweep Gilmor Street clean of trash in front of her small red-bricked rowhouse.
Laura Ashley Newton liked to draw little pictures of Teletubbies, and would slip them into neighbors' mail slots every morning. November 30, 1999|By Peter Hermann | Peter Hermann,SUN STAFF Remembrance: City neighborhood mourns the death of Laura Newton with tears, toys and notes. A special little girl, a tragic fatal fire
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