The riots, violence and protests over the last few days in Baltimore have most people staying away from the city. Several Harford residents, however, were downtown when the Freddie Gray death protests began over the weekend and morphed into rioting.
John Carroll students attended their prom at the National Aquarium in Baltimore Saturday night, while a handful of others from Harford were attending, or at least trying to, take in an Orioles game.
Bel Air's Elise Andrews was among those downtown as the peaceful protests turned volatile toward the evening's end.
"Our plan was to go to the Orioles game. We had family in town for a nurse practitioners' convention," she explained, noting she had her two children, ages 7 and 9, in tow. "Long story short, we ended up not going [to the game] because we didn't know what was going to happen. My niece was staying in the Hilton right across from Camden Yards, so we saw the protesters."
"It was fine, everything was peaceful, they kind of came and left. While we were eating, we saw that things had kind of changed," she said.
She ended up spending the night at the downtown Hilton Saturday night after going out to check on her car, parked at Howard and Lombard streets, "which wasn't good."
Then she saw two rows of police in riot gear, and one "basically told us, 'You need to go back to the hotel and shelter in place.'"
Andrews' car and family were ultimately fine, and they left the hotel the next day. She said her children learned an important lesson from the experience.
"One of them had finished a 'We the People' unit, so I was really happy for him to see that people can disagree and have issues and be peaceful about it," she said, adding they also saw what happens when those disagreements end in property damage.
"My kids did see the broken glass," she said of local businesses that were vandalized, explaining it seemed like a "distinctly different group of people" who were violent.
"I think it was people looking to cause problems," she said. "We are a family that tries very hard to look at two sides of things."
Andrews said she never felt unsafe but just was unsure of what might happen.
"We weren't afraid. We were just being very aware of our surroundings," she said.
The demonstrations and the volatility that followed, she said, are "representative of something that is present in our culture that we can't ignore anymore."
"We need to engage in a dialogue and we need to take action," she said.
'Mayhem'
Forest Hill resident Stacey Sicca-Barnhart also traveled to Baltimore Saturday afternoon with her husband, 12-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter to meet friends for food and drinks before they went to the Baltimore Orioles game against the Boston Red Sox.
She said they parked near M&T Bank Stadium around 5:30 p.m., and they met their friends at the Pratt Street Ale House a few blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
Sicca-Barnhart said they were sitting outside, enjoying appetizers and drinks, and they saw some protesters, "just a few stragglers running through the street, running through traffic holding up signs."
The group's waiter asked them around 6:30 p.m. if they were going to the Orioles game. When they told him they were, he said they should leave right away as the crowds of protesters were coming through downtown, "and they were planning on barricading Camden Yards."
"We immediately paid our bill, and no sooner than we got up out of our seats, we started hearing all the commotion," Sicca-Barnhart said.
The Ale House is in the 200 block of West Pratt Street. Sicca-Barnhart said they could not cross the street and had to make their way around police and protesters.
They were close to Pickles Pub, in the 500 block of Washington Boulevard across from the baseball stadium, when they encountered protesters who were throwing anything they could pick up.
Sicca-Barnhart said people were throwing police barricades, beers from restaurant patrons' tables, even hot dog buns.
"They were taking buns off the hot dog stands and throwing them at people," she said.
Sicca-Barnhart said she even collided with one protester during the trek to the stadium.
"I came face to face with this one protester that scared the heck out of me," she said.
She said the man was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and large goggles.
"You don't see people walking around every day wearing big rubber goggles," she said.
Sicca Barnhart said the man did not interact with her, though, and he kept moving.
"He had other things on his mind," she said. "You could tell he was pretty pumped up, and I was just a little mom trying to get to the game, so he ignored me, which I was fine with."
Sicca-Barnhart said she and her party got into Camden Yards, where she said police were standing "at full attention," just before the violence escalated.
She said it was hard to focus on the Orioles-Red Sox game because of low-flying helicopters, and fans were told about halfway through the game that they could not leave the stadium.
Fans were not given the all-clear until after the Orioles broke a tie with a game-winning home run. Sicca-Barnhart and her family got back to their vehicle without incident, and they headed home.
She said she has never experienced anything like the mayhem she saw Saturday.
"Never in my lifetime, never," she said. "It was stressful, unnerving; I had my 12- and 14-year-old with us, it was hard to explain what was actually happening."
Sicca-Barnhart said her children were "very interested at first, simply because they've never experienced such commotion."
"As time went on the interest started turning into a little fear, and they were definitely concerned about what the heck was happening, or what was going to happen," she said.
Sicca-Barnhart said she and her family love going to Orioles games, and they plan to return to Charm City eventually, "but not until this blows over."
She said her friend and his girlfriend, who came from South Carolina and Boston, respectively, attended the game with them.
"He just said it wasn't the way he planned to spend his vacation," Sicca-Barnhart said of her friend.
'Safe the whole time'
By contrast, John Carroll School students encountered very few problems going downtown for its prom Saturday night at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
"It was fine," Principal Madelyn Ball said Tuesday. "We were safe the whole time. It was a wonderful time."
School officials had spoken with police Friday to determine the best route to take to the aquarium. That route was changed, however, after the protests began to get more violent near Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Ball said.
The buses parked near Pier 5 and dropped off the students, who walked over the footbridges to get to the aquarium.
"Everybody was in by 7 p.m., there were no problems whatsoever," she said.
The 240 to 250 students take luxury buses to the prom; they are not allowed to drive themselves or take limousines. She said the dance likely would have been canceled if students had to get there independently.
"That just would have been too dangerous," Ball said.
Parents were kept up to date throughout the evening about the status of the students, Ball said.
Students also attended a post-prom party at Arundel Mills.
As they prepared to leave the prom, aquarium security said they didn't like the idea of the students going back over the footbridges, so the buses came behind the aquarium one at a time to load the students.
"We had absolutely no problems. That worked out well," Ball said.