Friday, October 28, 2005

October 28

Twenty-four-year-old Nelson Urbina died Tuesday morning after being beaten with a bat outside his O'Donnell Heights home in Southeast Baltimore on Monday night. He is the 224th homicide victim in Baltimore this year. A reward is being offered for information that leads to an arrest.

In Baltimore County, 21-year-old Parkville resident Montrell Dawaan Williams was shot to death at a party in Towson after arguing with another man. A suspect has been arrested.

James Carl Combs, who was found guilty of molesting two boys while an assitant Scoutmaster in the early 1980s, will not have to sign up with the sex offender registry. Cecil County Judge O. Robert Lidums declared that since Combs' crimes pre-dated Megan's Law, he does not have to join the registry. Combs was sentenced by Lidums to three months in the county jail and three months house arrest.

Despite the staggering estimates that about 10 percent of the Baltimore City population are drug addicts, it appears that drug and alcohol use is decreasing among Maryland teenagers, especially teenagers in the city. The Maryland Dept. of Education partially credits increased drug awareness programs of the past 15 years. The downside is that even though city teenagers aren't doing drugs, they are continuing to sell them in ever-increasing numbers.

Dan Rodricks continues writing about his plea for the city's drug players to go straight. Today's installment discusses how the BPD's more aggressive arrests helped inspire several dealers to consider leaving the game.

In the "beware of Trojans bearing gifts" department (or the "why are there so many freaky pervs in MD" dept) Glynis E. Neale won a $250,000 civil judgment against Anthony O'Neal, a friend who had given her a television and clock radio. It turned out that the gifts contained hidden cameras with which O'Neal monitored and videotaped Neale from a van parked outside her house.

Two teenagers were arrested for the vandalism at the Wicomico County Airport Civil Air Patrol office over the weekend.

And in other airport news, 46-year-old Olushola Oladapo was sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in an identity theft conspiracy based out of BWI. Oladapo's husband, a former baggage handler for Southwest Airlines, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing mail from flights departing from BWI.

Lawyers for Akiba Matthews, the visionary director behind the Stop Snitchin' DVD, say that the police have a vendetta against him. Hard to imagine, isn't it?

Richard Palumbo, the PG County Judge who dropped the protective order against Roger Hargrave, has been reassigned to administrative duties. Three weeks after the order was removed, Hargrave walked into the T-Mobile store where his wife worked, poured gasoline on her, and set her on fire. She is still in the hospital.

As a result of a supposedly different kind of crime, funeral services were held for 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Norman W. Anderson III, a Marine and Parkton resident who was killed by a suicide bomber in Karabilah on October 19. Anderson's survivors include his wife Tori, to whom he was married for less than three months.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Chuck, thanks for taking on the work associated with updating the site.

And while I appreciate your thoughts about Syria, I was actually going to recommend sending our ADULT offenders there.
Carpet-bomb Assad with East Baltimore hoodlums, yeah.

Alternatively we could teach them a trade: jailbuilding. Maybe a catchy program name, like O'Malley uses : Young Males for More Jails. I'll buy that T-shirt.

taotechuck said...

As much as I'd like to take credit for the Syria comment, I'm trying to keep my politics out of here, at least for a couple of days. I've got to be on my good behavior for a little while!

It does surprise me, though, that our military isn't actively exploring and exploiting the vast resources of Americans who are accustomed to the stresses of never knowing when they're going to get attacked and/or killed. Somehow I imagine that a Baltimore dealer might adjust more quickly to a war zone than a kid from the suburbs.

Anonymous said...

You may have something there, Chuck. Marty O'Malley has been talking so much about building silly convention hotels to make use of our harborfront Disneyland and now you've just reminded me that the best way to maximally utilize what Baltimore has become is to rent the city out to the Navy Seals to practice urban hand-to-hand. And we have that whole Beirut-chic visual thing going, too. Remember when the pentagon test-exploded that mega-bunkerbuster bomb in Homestead, Florida before taking it on the road to Afghanistan? They could have tested it here and cleared out East Baltimore for good ol' Hopkins Hospital in one fell swoop. Now, since the Bloods are apparently so intent on setting up shop here, maybe we could persuade them to turn in the du-rags in exchange for a nice Khefiyya. You teach them a little gutter Arabic, change their moniker to Intifada, and you're set. Armor-piercing rounds are on me, fellas.
Hey, back during WWII this town made a bunch of dough off of sailors' shore leave, too.

Anonymous said...

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/5191408/detail.html

This just in... 'Stop Snitchin'' cameraman Akiba Matthews has been acquitted by a jury of his peers on all counts of possession & intent to distribute cocaine and heroin. Police contend that sizable drug sales proceeds in the form of cash were recovered, as well.
I haven't read the pleadings, but this is a very disturbing result. In the face of really very tangible evidence, the only defense could be 'it's a frameup'. That is, every shred of evidence is phony and the police are fully perjured.
If true, we have a disaster. If false and the jury let him go because of a mistaken conspiracy theory, we have a disaster.

Either way, this is no good. I suspect that the deficiency is with the jury of his peers, who would rather let him walk than confront the gravity of the perjury allegation and see it through to its final disposition.

Anonymous said...

Wouldja believe.... one more escape?


(AP) Baltimore, MD Corrections officials say an armed robbery suspect escaped from Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center today.

This is the third suspect to escape custody this week.

Forty-two-year-old Troy Gross of Gwynn Oak was arrested on armed robbery and other charges Thursday and brought to the booking facility Friday morning. He was being held without bail.

Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, says correctional officers discovered today that Gross was missing.

Vernarelli was unsure of how Gross was able to escape, saying that Gross "apparently walked out of the facility." It's not clear exactly when he left.

Gross is considered potentially dangerous. The escape is under investigation.


Uh, I'd hope so, yeah.

Unknown said...

Hey Chuck just wanted to say good job on your posts here, It's not a fun thing to keep up with but I'm glad someone does.

Anonymous said...

Hey, D.'s C, easy there. I don't think it was personal. Liz and I were simply expressing appreciation to whosoever was performing this public service. That certainly includes its creator.

If praise was not forthcoming earlier, it's just because many of us just discovered the site, courtesy of CityPaper, which certainly should have invited you to the party.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Sorry Liz. I'm sure you're a lovely girl. I was up until 6 a.m. drinking Chinese liquor made out of a fermented snake.

Anonymous said...

Back to work, a friend of mine just told me that her nephew was just murdered. He had been released from prison the prior day. He wasn't particularly reformed, just back. My understanding is that it was a toss-up whether they got him first, or he got them. Either way, the kill-count went up when the gate swung open. The aunt is in rehab now; she's been in and out for years. She seems to be taking the murder in her stride; it's not like this was unexpected.

BTW, Chuck & Co., if I rant a bit here, it's because I'm so incredibly frustrated with the crime-saturated environment in which my life is embedded and the lousy municipal government which doesn't give a damn even while I daily endure crime against my person and property which NONE of them would sustain in THEIR neighborhoods for a moment. As they tell me "There's nothing we can do.", I go forth and do it for them. Q.E.D. Does anything change? Nah. Just another damn election. Oops, this sounds like a rant. Stifle.

Unknown said...

I can take a mistake in stride and when people seem to confront me I can get a bit out of line too.
Saying I like this site may not be correct, but I appreciate it as a lot of this info is important to some. I saw my brother's homicide on here back in the june archives, and sometimes it's good to know someone else is paying attention to the condition of this city other than me.

Maurice Bradbury said...

You can rant here anytime, Galt. And that's awful about the nephew-- both death and the feeling of 'business as usual' about it. It is very frustrating-- the witness intimidation part is what bothers me the most (today), and the massive distrust of the police in the community. I'm glad to see witness-intimidation arrests and prosecutions and I'll be watching the case of the Remington-ites closely. When witnesses have confidence that they will be protected, even if it means giving them a cop-bodyguard 24/7, then there's hope.