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Body found in Inner Harbor near Under Armour headquarters

A body was pulled from the Inner Harbor Tuesday afternoon near Under Armour headquarters — at least the 11th time since October that someone has been found dead in the waters around downtown.

Few details were immediately available pending an autopsy, but police confirmed the body was retrieved around 2:17 p.m. off of the 1800 block of Hull St., where there is a water taxi pickup spot.

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Police do not specifically count or track the deaths of people who are found in the Inner Harbor. But a Baltimore Sun review of the harbor deaths in February showed a wide variety of circumstances. Some of the deceased were homeless, lived on houseboats or were simply visiting town. Alcohol has been a factor in several cases.

Ellen Worthing, a researcher who lives in South Baltimore, tracks and analyzes city crimes, including bodies found in the harbor and has recorded no more than four or five such cases most years, with a spike of 10 bodies found in the Inner Harbor in 2009.

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Only one case in recent years was determined to involve foul play, and it took more than two years before investigators learned the circumstances. Ankush Gupta, 22, had been walking through the area around Harborplace with friends in April 2008 when he fell into the water and drowned. No one saw what happened, nor did the network of surveillance cameras provides any clues.

But in 2010 police got a tip that a Pasadena man named Wayne Black had admitted to pushing Gupta into the water after asking him for a cigarette. Black was charged with involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison.

In a rare case in which cameras captured the incident, police say footage showed that Elizabeth O'Hearn, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine neurologist and professor, died after trying to climb a gate to get inside her property in November 2012.

jfenton@baltsun.com


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