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Socially conscious singer steps into the lights at Fillmore. A-15
The Gazette GAITHERSBURG | MONTGOMERY VILLAGE
DAILY UPDATES ONLINE www.gazette.net
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
25 cents
2 Navy Yard victims from Montgomery n
N. Potomac man among 12 killed by gunman on Monday in D.C. BY
SARAH SCULLY STAFF WRITER
David Kottler, who manages Mamma Lucia’s in Bethesda, checks an ID in the restaurant’s bar.
ONLINE EXTRA “IT’S SOMETHING WE SHOULD BE DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE” n Restaurants take cautious approach to county tests www.gazette.net
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PHOTOS BY DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE
Rachel is an underage volunteer for the Montgomery County Liquor Board. She poses in a Montgomery County liquor and wine store with her Maryland underage driver’s license, which is vertical and has a red box around her picture to indicate that she is not old enough to purchase alcohol. The Gazette blurred the personal details on her license.
NOT TAKING CHANCES ON Liquor department trial purchases made 400 times a year in county
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COMPLIANCE CHECKS 500
404
400
400
ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH
pronounce it correctly. When she started testing restaurants, she was nervous, she said. That first night, more than a half dozen of the 20 restaurants she tested ended up serving her illegally. Montgomery County Police work with underage volunteers such as Navarrete to check if restaurants and liquor establishments are selling to drinkers younger than 21, the minimum age to buy or drink alcohol in Maryland. “We don’t call it a sting operation,” said Kathie Durbin, chief of the licen-
STAFF WRITER
AND JACOB
BOGAGE
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE
Valeria Navarrete remembers the first time she tested whether a restaurant would sell her alcohol illegally. She was an underage volunteer working with Montgomery County Police. “I didn’t know anything or what to choose,” Navarrete said. She asked for a chardonnay, mostly because she knew what the wine looked like and how to
See UNDERAGE, Page A-11
Of the 400 county businesses tested in the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, 111 sold alcohol to minors.
Checked
600
BY
406
400
Failed
300 200
111
100 0
2013
102 2012
72%
Percent in compliance
2011
75%
120
110
83 2010
79%
113
2009
80%
2008
71%
80%
SOURCE: MONTGOMERY COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF LIQUOR CONTROL
Downtown crossing flagged for pedestrian safety program Walkers should get a chance to try out flag system this fall
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BY KRISTA BRICK STAFF WRITER
Looking both ways may not be enough to get you safely across the street in Gaithersburg. A new program may also have pedestrians carrying flags to warn drivers they are in the crosswalk. The mayor and council gave the go-ahead Monday to a pilot program that will allow pedes-
NEWS
LINING UP TO WELCOME WEGMANS
The new supermarket in Germantown opened Sunday to big crowds of eager shoppers.
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trians to carry a flag as they cross South Summit Avenue where it intersects Olde Town Avenue. The idea is to make pedestrians more visible to drivers. “I think it ultimately falls under something that can’t hurt,” said Ollie Mumpower, division chief for engineering services within the city’s public works department. City Councilman Michael Sesma requested the city look into the flag system a few years ago and said Friday he is anxious to put it to a trial. “It had been a solution that some communities had used on certain streets where signalizing is not easy to do or unnecessary or expensive. I’d like to
SPORTS
see how quickly it might be adopted by pedestrians and drivers,” Sesma said. The pilot location, which is close to city hall and also heavily used by pedestrians, is proposed as a good spot to see if the flags make a difference, Mumpower said. The flags will be located in containers on either side of a crosswalk and can be carried by pedestrians as they cross the street. Mumpower said the flags will serve as a signal to drivers that the pedestrian is crossing the street and not just standing near an intersection. Sesma
‘IT WAS VERY MEMORABLE’ Kennedy High School graduate gets a day with tennis pros at the US Open.
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See SAFETY, Page A-10
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See SHOOTING, Page A-9
Gaithersburg mulls rules for quiet zones Staff planning to present final proposal to deal with train noise within 30 days
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BY JENN DAVIS STAFF WRITER
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Two of the victims identified in Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard were residents of Montgomery County. According to D.C. Metropolitan Police, John Roger Johnson, 73, of Derwood and Vishnu Pandit, 61, of North Potomac were among 12 people shot and killed by a gunman at the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington. The suspected gunman, Aaron Alexis, was killed in a Pandit shootout with police; the FBI is seeking information about him. According to The Washington Post, Pandit was a civilian employee of the
When Daniel Abrahamson and his wife moved to the Parklands community in June, they knew their condominium was located near train tracks, but they were astonished to hear loud freight trains rushing by at all hours of the night. “On a recent Saturday night, a train came through and blasted its horn after 1 a.m.,” he said. “This woke us up from a sound sleep. But, what made it especially distressing, was that no sooner had we fallen back asleep, another train came through blasting its horn and waking us up again.” On Monday night, city manager Tony Tomasello updated the mayor and council on the staff’s research on the creation of quiet zones near several locations of the city’s high-traffic train tracks. “This presentation is a work in progress,” Tomasello said at the city council meeting. “We are still actively researching.” Tomasello said city staff are planning to present the final proposal for the quiet zone to the mayor and council within 30 days. The three target areas for these zones would be the tracks’ intersections with South Summit Avenue, Chestnut Street
See QUIET, Page A-11
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