Carroll J. ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, Baltimore City Council member who survived shooting in 1976, dies

Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun
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Carroll J. “Fitz” Fitzgerald, a former Baltimore City councilman who survived a 1976 shooting rampage at a temporary City Hall office, died July 8 of a pulmonary embolism at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. The Mays Chapel resident was 89.

On April 13, 1976, Charles A. Hopkins, owner of an East Baltimore carryout, entered temporary rented offices at 26 S. Calvert St. during renovations at City Hall.

Mr. Hopkins, carrying a .38-caliber revolver in a paper bag, boarded an elevator and headed for then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer’s seventh-floor office.

Mayor Schaefer was in his office eating lunch when Mr. Hopkins encountered a mayoral aide, Kathleen Nolan, and shot her in the neck.

Hearing gunfire, Joanne A. McQuade, another mayoral aide, picked up the phone to call for help when she felt someone near her.

“Hang up or I’ll blow your head off,” said Mr. Hopkins, who then asked where the mayor was.

Ms. McQuade replied that the mayor was in Annapolis, and then offered to help Mr. Hopkins out of the building.

Using Ms. McQuade as a hostage, Mr. Hopkins pushed her along at gunpoint and demanded to be taken to where the council offices were.

Breaking free, Ms. McQuade ran to safety while Mr. Hopkins opened fire, killing Councilman Dominic M. Leone and wounding four others, including Mr. Fitzgerald.

Councilman J. Joseph Curran Sr., who had a heart attack during the encounter, died within a year.

Victims were transported to Mercy Hospital, where a Sun reporter wrote, there was “Councilman Fitzgerald holding his stomach with blood seeping through his hands.”

In 1977, a jury found Mr. Hopkins not guilty by reason of insanity and he was committed to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center.

“I hope the doctors will take a close look at whether this individual should ever be let out,” Mr. Fitzgerald, who made a full recovery, told The Sun at the time.

“How can they guarantee this same thing won’t happen again, that his mind won’t snap again?” he asked.

“How Carroll suffered,” said former City Councilwoman and President Mary Pat Clarke. “He took a terrible blow.”

“He did not talk about it, but would occasionally refer to it, but didn’t talk about it all that much,” said a son, Thomas J. Fitzgerald, of Parkville

Jim Henneman, former Evening Sun baseball reporter, and Mr. Fitzgerald were classmates at Calvert Hall College High School, where they played team sports. “He never spoke about the attack, but I’m sure Fitz was heroic,” Mr. Henneman said. “I also think his athleticism played into his survival, but what a tragic, tragic thing to have to go through.”

Carroll James Fitzgerald, son of Carroll L. Fitzgerald, an Esso Oil Co. worker, and Agnes Fitzgerald, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Potomac Street in East Baltimore.

He attended Patterson High School for a year before being recruited by a coach to Calvert Hall.

During his three years at Calvert Hall, he earned seven varsity letters playing baseball, basketball and soccer.

“He was a great teammate who always had your back covered. He was a very supportive and caring guy,” Mr. Henneman said.

After graduating in 1953, he began his college studies at what is now Loyola University Maryland, where he played varsity baseball and basketball.

Part of ROTC at Loyola, after earning a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in political science in 1957, he went on active duty the next year with the Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he taught missile air defense systems to officers.

After being discharged in 1959, he began working as an underwriter trainee in 1960 for Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, one of the largest surety and fidelity bonding companies in the country.

While working at F&D during the day, he studied law at night at what is now the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Obtaining his law degree in 1964, he was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1965.

A Democrat, in 1971 he ran for a seat on the City Council from the 3rd District in Northeast Baltimore, where he lived on Silverbell Road in Gardenville, and won. He went on to serve three terms.

“He ran with J. Joseph Curran Sr. and Frank X. Gallagher. It was the Irish ticket,” his son said, with a laugh.

One of his achievements was working with Mayor Schaefer on the redevelopment of the Inner Harbor.

“We always knew where he stood on things,” Ms. Clarke said. “Carroll was a thoughtful, caring and quiet representative of the people who lived in his district.”

He left the council in 1983, and his wife, Mary Alberta Stevenson, whom he married in 1958, filled the last year of his term on the council, family members said.

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During his tenure at F&D, he was vice president and executive vice president until retiring in 1995.

For 16 years he was a member, and later president and interim CEO, of the board of Harford Mutual Insurance Co.

Later, he became board chairman until stepping down in 2013. Other boards he sat on include the Institute of Notre Dame and Archbishop Curley High School.

Mr. Fitzgerald, who later moved to Loch Raven and finally Mays Chapel, was an avid golfer, and onetime president of Sparrows Point Country Club. He and his wife, who died in 2018, owned a home in Bonita Springs, Florida, where he was a member of Vasari Country Club.

Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Henneman shared a mutual love of baseball and Calvert Hall.

“We’d be watching a game at night — two old guys in their 80s — and Fitz would be texting me back and forth, ‘Why don’t they take this guy out?’ or ‘What’s going on here?’ It was just hilarious.”

Mr. Fitzgerald was a communicant of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Cockeysville, where a Mass of Christian Burial was offered Saturday.

In addition to his son, he is survived by another son, Timothy Fitzgerald, of Rodgers Forge; two daughters, Mary Elizabeth Bollinger, of Perry Hall, and Mary Carol Pearce, of Monkton; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.