Family ‘begged’ woman to leave vacant home before fatal blaze
Weeks before Brittany Wolf died of smoke inhalation in Baltimore’s first fatal fire of the year, her older sister begged her to come home.
The 32-year-old had mostly been silent to her family while she was living in a vacant rowhome in Ellwood Park, which caught fire Jan. 17. She had been staying there over the past several months with a romantic interest that her family believes had been a bad influence, said Nicole Wolf, her older sister.
While the family’s calls to Brittany’s cellphone went to voicemail for a time, she reached Nicole Wolf in early January asking for financial help. Nicole said she asked her sister to stay with her family, which was willing to help out.
Brittany decided to stay at the N. East Avenue building, owned by one of the city’s most aggressive investment firms. Nicole said it was because Brittany wanted to support the man, whom Nicole did not name.
Nicole said her sister was “always funny, and fun to be around.” Always the “life of the party,” Brittany was extremely outgoing and caring, her sister said. She loved hip-hop music and to learn about the rappers she admired.
“She could walk into a room and brighten it up,” Nicole Wolf said of her sister, who worked at the Bel-Garden Bi-Rite grocery store on Belair Road for several years before moving on to work at McDonald’s.
“Every time I would see her the last couple of years, she was working,” said Rachel Berlin, a longtime friend of the Wolf sisters.
Berlin said that she and Brittany were once “inseparable,” spending time together nearly every day.
While working at the fast-food restaurant, Brittany would give dinner to people she encountered who were hungry and needed help, Nicole Wolf said.
“She would give them her last,” Nicole said.
After the sisters lost their father, John Maynard Wolf, in 2018, and their mother, Karen Michelle Wolf, in 2020, Brittany began to cope with alcohol and pills, Nicole said. When Brittany met the man she would later stay with in the vacant N. East Avenue building, her addictions spiraled further, her sister said.
While Brittany’s family was willing to provide her with housing, her romantic interest was homeless and not able to go anywhere, Nicole said.
Family and friends have set up a small memorial of candles, pictures and letters to Brittany on the stoop of the N. East Avenue building, where the smell of burnt wood still lingered Wednesday. Torn-down police tape lay in puddles throughout the 400 block, where nearly a quarter of the residences are vacant.
In Baltimore, vacant homes burn at twice the national rate. A few of the vacant homes on the block have been rehabilitated in recent years, according to the city’s housing
database. The house where the fire broke out was not one of them.
The city first noted the vacant property in April 2019, when an inspector found the building was unoccupied with a busted front window and open rear door, according to Tammy Hawley, a Baltimore City Housing Department spokesperson.
Since 2019 the city has cleaned the property eight times and boarded it four times, Hawley said. The vacancy notice was passed to three different owners over the years that followed.
Alva 74 Investment, a Florida company that bought the building in 2020, was cited for failing to register a vacant building and failing to abate the property’s issues.
Alva 74 Investment later sold the property to Dionne, a LLC associated with Jason “Jay” Walsh and his company, IPP USA. City officials issued Dionne a citation in December 2022 for failing to register a vacant building.
The citation is still open, Hawley said. Walsh, who also runs ABC Capital, has been one of Baltimore’s most aggressive homebuyers in recent years, selling most of his companies’ properties to foreign investors and managing them with third-party companies.
Walsh and his companies have been sued by foreign investors, who allege they were misled and that the residences they purchased were left vacant and in disrepair.
Since the Jan. 17 fire Walsh and his companies have been sued by investors twice more, according to federal court records. ABC Capital declared bankruptcy last November.
Walsh did not respond to a request to comment.
Fire investigators are still attempting to determine what happened to the vacant rowhome.
Finding out what happened would help the family find closure, Nicole Wolf said.
“It would help us heal a whole lot,” she said. “Just to know what happened, how the fire started.”
Berlin said she would “forever cherish” the time she spent with Brittany, who “was too good of a person” to die in such a tragic manner.
“This is just, it’s like a nightmare for us,” Nicole Wolf said. “I can’t believe we lost her in this way.”