The Seaford City Council and Mayor Matt MacCoy honored Grace Peterson, a resident of Seaford and former City Council Woman, during the recent council meeting last week. Peterson’s life experience prompted Senate Bill 292, The Grace Peterson Act, which will be active beginning March 9, 2027.

The courageous acts and determined survival of Peterson in 2023, when abducted, assaulted, pistol-whipped, and thrown into the Wicomico River to die led to not only the arrest and conviction of her attacker, but also to a new law. The now-convicted person, who also put a hire-for-murder out on Peterson while awaiting trial, is serving life plus 60 in a federal prison. The law known as the “Grace Peterson Act” is a warm hand-off that mandates any landlord that receives state funding for a tenant’s rent must complete a discharge plan that will provide for that change before terminating the lease.

The new law requires house operators to formulate and work with the person on a discharge plan, including direct connections to shelters and support services, before proceeding with an eviction. Representative Danny Short said of the bill that passed in June 2026 and signed into law by Governor Matt Meyer in September, “By tenure in the House, these bills sometimes are not very easy to be done; a lot of credit today goes to Grace Peterson for being able to tell her story and having the courage.”

Short added, “My colleague Senator Stephanie Hansen did a great job championing the bill. It is a situation where a Seaford girl comes home to do the right thing and potentially save lives for the future. So I’d like just to say congratulations to my colleague Senator Hansen, without you, this bill would not have gotten done. Thank you so much.”

Hansen is a 1979 Seaford High School graduate, retired attorney, and has served as State Senator since 2017. Senator Hansen read aloud and presented to Peterson a ceremonial copy of “The Grace Peterson Act.”

 Senator Hansen, in her presentation said, “The perpetrator had previously been incarcerated for a violent crime, served his time, and was then placed in reentry housing in Seaford, in a quiet residential neighborhood just a few doors down from Mrs. Grace Peterson. Reentry housing that was not operating under any rules or licensing imposed by the state, that purported to offer case management, whatever that meant, and that was operating carte blanche to evict tenants some of the violent history on the spot, with no direction, no means to get to their next landing area, no notice to any governmental entity to simply show them the door and accept no consequences for what might happen as a result of that, and that was a recipe for disaster. That’s what happened here. As government, we cannot allow a situation where people who are re-entering society from prison, are housed in an area that is completely unfamiliar to them, with little or no money, maybe no friends or family in that area, subject to eviction under no rules meant to assist them in getting from point A to point B, and what has to be an agitated state that puts both the person and the community in that area in danger, and we saw the consequences of that play out here.”

Hansen said of Peterson’s resilience, “She was down, but she was not out-not by a long shot-and she has taken what was a tragedy for her, the Seaford community, and our larger state community, and turned it into new protections for both people in reentry housing and the communities in which they are located.”

“This is wonderful and Senator Hansen did all the work, it now makes the landlord accountable and hitting their pockets, I think they will pay attention and the supervisors of the recovery houses do their jobs. I had all the support of my community,” said Peterson, mentioning City Councilman Dan Henderson, Assistant Police Chief Tyler Justice, and City Manager Charles Anderson, who escorted her to state hearings on the bill. “It is overwhelming to know I have the support of my community and so grateful that Senator Hansen took on the challenge. Danny Short got me on the right track.”

Vice Mayor Dan Henderson said of Peterson, “She was my summer mom. I grew up on Arch Street, and we would come down to this area with neighborhood friends, and she was always the woman who was enforcing the rules and taking care of us, making sure we didn’t stray, but making sure we all had fun. So it was a running joke when I served with her on council that I called her mom. So you know, when this horrific thing happened to her, it was something that immediately cut to my heart.”

Mayor Matt MacCoy called Peterson a hero and shared of her willingness to help any member of council as they learned the new role.

After the meeting, Peterson said it would be great to see other states follow the same path. “This bill is under the landlord tenant code, which was Stephanie Hansen’s brilliance. I would love to see other states follow,” she said.

In other council business, the council approved the extension to C&M Properties Delaware, LLC to use a lot for Fed-Ex parking until January 31, 2028.

The council also agreed to participate in the settlement of litigation involving the contamination of water and soil by PFAS (Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as forever chemicals. The request authorized the city to participate in the class action settlements with Amerex Corporation.

The city will also continue to participate in claims against all defendants that may be liable for damages to the city of Seaford public drinking water. This settlement money, as explained by Anderson, is for the companies who handled and distributed the chemicals.

The Downtown Seaford’s Association Fall Festival is this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.