Baltimore Street Vendor Arrested After 'Lady In The Lake' Threat Claim

BALTIMORE, MD — A Baltimore street vendor is facing drug charges several days after a film crew of the Apple TV+ series “Lady in the Lake” halted production after accusations that they felt threatened.

According to a police report, Keith Brown, 43, of Pikesville was taken into custody Monday. His arrest comes after Baltimore police said they are still trying to make sense of some of the discrepancies in the case, including allegations of extortion and violence.

Three days before Brown's arrest, police said a crew member on the set of the Endeavor Content production “Lady in the Lake” reported that they had received a "verbal threat of violence" from someone.

The crew member also told police that this person pulled out a gun.

At that time, filming was halted out of an abundance of caution, police said.

Through their investigation, detectives said they determined Brown, a local street vendor, was upset that he had not been compensated by the production for lost business, since he could not operate his clothing business while the crew was filming in the 200 block of Park Avenue.

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Police said Brown informed detectives that he had talked with a crew member and a security manager and was awaiting paperwork to receive compensation for lost business on Friday.

It's not clear if Brown did, in fact, pull out a gun during the encounter. BPD Police Spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge told multiple news outlets, including WBFF, that there are some "discrepancies" over whether a gun was actually used.

According to a police report, a location manager for the show initially told an officer that two men approached the crew and demanded $50,000 to film at the location and that "they pulled a gun and brandished it at one of the workers."

When police asked the location manager what the gun looked like, officers said the location manager retracted his original statement of seeing the gun and advised that one of the drivers saw it instead.

"Officer Mobley's investigation revealed the reporting person to be inconsistent with their reporting of the incident," the police report read.

Police said they also spoke to a supervisor for the security firm working with the film crew who told them that a "group of people wanted $4,000 for the film crew to be able to film in the area."

Police said the security supervisor later changed the amount to $50,000 dollars and explained that the group threatened to shoot in the air unless they received the money.

Detectives said they are still in the process of interviewing additional people in hopes of having a better understanding of all that took place during filming on Park Avenue.

“Lady in the Lake” is an adaptation of Laura Lippman’s New York Times best-selling novel of the same name.

The limited series takes place in 1960s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder pushes housewife and mother Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to reinvent her life as an investigative journalist and sets her on a collision course with Cleo Sherwood (Baltimore native Moses Ingram), a hard-working woman juggling motherhood, many jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda, according to an Apple press release.

Lippman was a reporter for 20 years, including 12 years at The Baltimore Sun. She published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001, according to her biography. Her work has received multiple national awards, and Lippman was the first recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.