The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

BY SYDNEY TRENT

The 10-year-old stood on a toilet to peer out the

top-floor window o f the towering house in northwest

Washington, her eyes riveted on the mayhem below.

Rioters had already flipped a car and set it ablaze

across the street, and Georgette nelson watched as

they dragged a man from his moving delivery truck

and beat him. soon, a throng had gathered on the

sidewalk just steps from their front door at 1425

euclid st. nW, waving makeshift wooden t orches.

“Burn it from the ground! They can’t get out that

way,” nelson recalled someone shouting before her

mother yanked her to the floor.

Her younger brother looked at her with fear and

sadness. “Georgette, are we going to die?” t he 8-year-

old asked.

The riots that raged across the nation’s capital for

four days in April 1968 after Martin Luther King Jr.'s

assassination left loss upon loss in their wake: 13

people dead, scores of homes and businesses burned,

see retropolIs on B2

KLMNO

METRO

TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/REGIONAL eZ sU B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

two d.c. veterans who

went to nashville as part

of operation song debut

the recordings. B3

CAPITAL WEATHER GANG

snowless and abnormally

mild february caps d.c.’s

seventh-warmest winter

on record. B8

OBITUARIES

James lipton, 93, was the

creator and host of the

Bravo tV show “Inside the

51 ° 57 ° 64 ° 59 ° Actors studio.” B6

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 4 p.m.

64

°

Precip: 65%

Wind: SSW

7-14 mph

BY OVETTA WIGGINS

Lawyers, real estate agents,

accountants and other small-

business owners told a Maryland

House committee Monday that

expanding the sales tax to in-

clude professional services

would devastate the economy.

“The fact that we’ve all come

together should be a demonstra-

tion to the legislature of how

meaningful and negative this

bill” would be, said Dana o.

Williams, a lawyer and president

of the Maryland state Bar Asso-

ciation. His concern e choed criti-

cism by Gov. Larry Hogan (R),

who has denounced the plan and

labeled it the largest single tax

increase in state history.

House legislative leaders in-

troduced the bill last month as a

way to pay for a major overhaul

of public education, including an

expansion of prekindergarten,

teacher pay increases, and pro-

grams to make more students

ready for college and careers.

The tax, which would take

effect Jan. 1, would raise

$887 million in fiscal 2021 and

about $2.9 billion in fiscal 2025,

according to legislative analysts.

To help mitigate its impact on

people’s wallets, the sales tax

rate would be reduced from 6

see mArylAnd on B5

B ill to tax

services in

Md. meets

opposition

Business owners say

education-funding plan

would damage economy

them to care for sick patients, it

puts them and our communities

at risk!”

True, and Adams didn’t even

mention a whole other

population of workers who are

now at risk thanks to America’s

uneducated mask obsession —

the ones who guys like Moore

deals with daily at his Bowie

store.

“now we have all these people

who use them for painting or

insulation work and can’t get

them,” he said. “We’re getting

complaints, but we can’t help

them. This is happening at all

the stores all over.”

Anyone who works with

chemicals, paint, drywall dust,

insulation, fiberglass, silica,

sawdust or mold will be

vulnerable to lung damage and

diseases like silicosis if they can’t

get the protective masks that are

usually part of their tool kit.

Independent painting and

construction contractors are

coming in and finding empty

shelves. The big firms that get

see dVorAK on B3

This is

embarrassing,

America.

Thanks to our

collective refusal

to listen to facts,

paint department

managers across

the country aren’t

talking about eggshell,

semigloss, sanding or chemically

stripping so much right now.

“Masks, masks, that’s all I’ve

done the past two days is tell

people we’re out of masks,” said

Bob Moore, an Air Force veteran

who works in the paint

department at a Lowe’s in

suburban Maryland.

That’s not all he — and many

others — want to tell them.

“seriously people — sToP

BUYInG MAsKs!” U.s. surgeon

General Jerome M. Adams said

in a tweet on saturday morning,

speaking for Moore, paint store

workers and so many others.

“They are noT effective in

preventing general public from

catching #Coronavirus, but if

healthcare providers can’t get

Fearful hordes hoarding

masks put workers at risk

Petula

Dvorak

BY JOE HEIM

on Dec. 30, William Lowe, his

wife, Xiaoli, and their 5-year-old

daughter, Weiya, boarded a plane

at B altimore-Washington I nterna-

tional Marshall Airport. The flight

was the first leg in a much-antici-

pated trip to China for the Mary-

land family.

Xiaoli is a graduate student

who hadn’t spent t he Lunar new

Year in her home country since

2011. L owe, a professor at Howard
      Community College, was on a se-
      mester-long sabbatical. They
      looked forward t o a month of visit-
      ing friends and family, traveling
      throughout the country and al-
      lowing Weiya to spend time with
      cousins she video-chats with sev-
      eral times a week.
      That was the plan anyway. In
      just a few weeks, it would be up-
      ended to an almost unimaginable
      degree.

The family found itself stuck

275 miles from Wuhan, the city of

11 million that is the epicenter of

the coronavirus outbreak. Travel

restrictions forbid them from

moving freely. Their planned re-

turn home Jan. 29 came a nd went.

see fAmIly on B4

Md. family’s escape from coronavirus

Long-awaited trip to

China ends in evacuation

and quarantine

fAmIly PHoto

William lowe, 51, and his daughter, Weiya, 5, at the airport in

Wuhan, China, before their evacuation flight last month.

RETROPOLIS

From fiery riot to joyful reunion

Rescued as children from a D.C. on fire in 1968, a brother and sister find each other after five decades

dAVId mcnew for tHe wAsHIngton Post

georgette nelson and her brother, Wayne Cook, are reunited at a monrovia, Calif., rehabilitation center where Cook was recovering from an infection.

targeted. no arrest has been

made.

Malachi is one of 28 people

killed this year in the District,

on pace with a homicide count

that made 2019 the deadliest in

a decade. Just over two months

into 2020, five teenagers have

died in violence.

“I have no words,” said Mala-

chi’s mother, Melissa Walls. “I’m

broken, really.” Through tears,

see sHootIng on B2

Malachi was fatally shot just

after 2 p.m. sunday as he walked

with friends to play basketball a

few short blocks from his home

in shaw, in northwest Washing-

ton. Police said a person opened

fire on a group in an alley off the

600 block of s street nW, hitting

two teenagers. Malachi was

struck in the neck.

Police have not commented

on a possible motive but said it

appeared the group had been

Community Center.

on Monday, the gifts re-

mained in his apartment un-

worn, his surprise trip now a

memory only to his mother and

a few others who had gone

along.

Jordans, jeans and the hoodies

he liked. He had scored high on

an eighth-grade test at Cardozo,

and he had a summer job lined

up, helping film a segment for

Real news Camp, a social justice

program produced at the shaw

BY PETER HERMANN

AND DANA HEDGPETH

Malachi Lukes had just re-

turned from a trip to new York

City, a surprise getaway with his

family to celebrate his birthday,

and he marveled at the vast

bridges spanning the waterways

around Manhattan.

He was to turn 14 on Thurs-

day, and more gifts awaited the

D.C. youth — a new pair of Air

Mother wants fatal shooting of Shaw youth to be ‘wake-up call’

SLAIN DAYS BEFORE hIS 14Th BIRThDAY

D.C. police say group may have been targeted

BY LAURA VOZZELLA

richmond — Gov. Ralph

northam on Monday signed a bill

banning conversion therapy for

minors, the first LGBT rights

measure to reach the Democrat’s

desk this year.

Virginia will become the 20th

state — and the first in the south

— to outlaw the therapy, a widely

discredited practice that pur-

ports to change a person’s sexual

orientation or gender identity.

Critics say it is traumatic for

patients and has led to suicides.

The ban, which takes effect

July 1, will not apply to adults

who choose the therapy for them-

selves.

“This issue is personal for me,

as a pediatric neurologist who

has cared for thousands of chil-

dren,” northam said in a state-

ment. “Conversion therapy is not

only based in discriminatory

junk-science, it is dangerous and

causes lasting harm to our youth.

no one should be made to feel

wrong for who they are — espe-

cially not a child. I’m proud to

sign this ban into law.”

Many other landmark LGBT

rights bills have also passed the

House and senate and are on

their way to the governor this

year, during the first session in a

generation with Democrats in

control of both legislative cham-

bers.

Among the other bills is one

that would make Virginia the

first southern state to ban anti-

LGBT discrimination in employ-

ment, housing and public accom-

see VIrgInIA on B3

Northam

signs first

of LGBT

rights bills

Ban on c onversion

therapy for minors is a

first for a Southern state