December 23

The 15-year-old girl who stabbed 15-year-old Kanisha Neal to death outside a MoCo football game in September was convicted of second-degree murder and weapons charges.

More on the case against and the arrest of alleged serial rapist Reginald Williams.

Who are the nine "gang members" arrested for "crimes"?

In Chase, Md. (wherever that is) a woman was shot in a home invasion.

Another "incident" at Towson Town Center! This time a man was robbed in the bathroom.

Michelle Dohm, a scary-looking Hagerstown middle school teacher, is accused of stalking and threatening students.

Yeech, a 44-year-old school administrator is charged with sending sexy text messages to a 17-year-old student.

A drug arrest, robbery etc from the blotter. From the CP archives: Blotteratio Dick Irwin enjoys mustard, puppets.

December 22

More information on the shooting of officers Leslie Holiday and Adam Vasquez. She was a mother of three, and he had a dog named Peanut. (Poor Gus et al must have been up all night...)

Offensive holiday greeting dept: 83 homeless people have died of hypothermia this year in the city!

BC: lynn, was this just in the city?
l: hi - that was only in the city. i hope this answers your question.
happy holidays! - lynn
BC: "happy holidays?" How awful! We can't spend what it takes as a city to keep these people in a heated room? That is repulsive! Don't we have a place for these people? We can't find them a gym somewhere?! Yikes!
lynn: i couldn't agree more. sorry if my holiday greeting offended you. it was not meant to.

Reginald Williams, the rape and robbery suspect who has been assaulting women in the Central, was shot by police.

An assault with a syringe, a rape on N. Port street, burglary, and an old man mugged at gunpoint at White Marsh in the Dick Irwin special.

Ai Papi: A Columbia (MD) man, Elmer Antonio Galvan-Giron, got 35 years for stabbing his roommate Rigoberto Zavala. Two other Honduran immigrants had been previously sentenced for their involvement.

Metro Digest: Baltimoreans, they loves some drugs.

BoCo police are looking for two guys who robbed a Royal Farms store.

Watch out, WMDs: 69-year-old Sister Ardeth Platte, right, is back on the streets.

Two newborn twins, a boy and girl, were found inside of North Austin Lutheran Church on the West side.

This guy is Blowing the Whistle on gansta culture. Unfortunately, though the word Sisyphean does come up a lot, not a story about the Down Low.

December 21

Two police officers, Adam Vasquez and Leslie Holliday, were shot and killed in Pikesville. A suspect, reportedly a male city employee who reportedly worked for the state Department of General Services (DGS) guarding state office buildings, surrendered in Woodlawn.

The man shot to death at Greenmount and 27th was a 50-year-old cab driver. The murder rate is now at 262.

The Ink is back, cataloguing the deaths of Rashard Thomas, 19; Talib Damon, 21; Timothy Ford Jr., 23; Damian Mitchell, 28; Brian Keith Jones, 18; Mohamed Abukar Barre, 26; Jonathan Coles, 23; Byron Lee Bell, 24; William Lowe, 43; and an unidentified person; but oddly, not Troy Marine or Raphael Grady.

Judge Charlotte M. Cooksey ordered Raymont Hopewell held without bail this morning following a bail review hearing. Hopewell was charged with three counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday. The court set a preliminary hearing date of January 19, 2006 in Wabash District Court. The Sun reports that Hopewell is also now charged with the September 2 rape of a 63-year-old woman. Amelia Tabron, an elderly survivor of an (alleged) attack by Hopewell recounts her struggle in the Sun.

What the?! According to this CP story, plainclothes police broke into David Scheper's house without a warrant, ate three pizzas, left the boxes, took $1,440 and some antique guns that they later used as props in an unrealted case, did $3,700 of damage and arrested him and his female roommate for discharging a gun when they mistook the detectives for home invaders.

A traffic stop at North Chester and Lafayette ended with a 33-year-old suspect shot in the jaw and arm.

Following the Supreme Court decision, charges were officially dropped against Leeander Blake.

Girl-on-girl carjacking action in Lothian.

In Parkville, police raided the Let's Play arcade and removed 20 poker machines.

The blotter is rife with theft.

In an Op-Ed in the Post from Sunday, former Governor Parris Glendening discusses the racial and geographic disparities of Maryland's death penalty, and calls Ehrlich's reinstating of executions "simply wrong."

December 20

Mohamed Abukar Barre, 26, was shot in the head on E. Belvedere Avenue. Also a 13-year-old assaulted a woman in the Eastern.

Raymont Hopewell has been charged in the murders of five senior citizens between 1999 and August 2005: Sadie Mack, 78, Carlton Crawford, 82, Constance Willis, 60, Sarah Shannon, 88 and Lydia Wingfield, 78, are all believed to be his victims. Correction to the Sun report, he was charged with three counts of murder (not five) overnight (he was charged with two Friday). Hopewell appeared before a court commissioner and was held without bail today. A bail review hearing before a District Court judge is expected to be scheduled for tomorrow.

A 45-year-old man got 15 1/2 years in federal prison for selling harerwin.

A 14-year-old admitted to the murder of Jerrod Hamlett, 23, and will serve a seven-year-sentence. The victim was killed after complaining that the boy was throwing bottles. The boy was a member of the "Cutthroat" gang, selling crack out of the Oswego Mall apartments.

More info on the Johnanthan Luna case: apparently the federal prosecutor was asked to take a poygraph over some missing cash soon before he was found dead.

In Glen Burnie, a man was charged with traffic violations in an accident that cost an offier his leg.

Dude. More than 100 pot plants were found in the woods near Wheaton. Who knew they could even tolerate this clime? (Grammar school: when a paper gets stories from the AP, all an editor has to do is write a headline. Still, this WJZ headline contains two violations of AP style. Can you spot them?)

Thank God: Intelligent Design has been thrown out of PA biology classes.

Galt, I can't find anything about the Greemount & 27th shooting, let me know if you hear anything...

December 19

A hearing has been rescheduled for 8:30 tomorrow morning for Heather Mink, 22, at the District Court on Wabash Avenue. Court documents allege that on September 10 Mink did by corrupt means/threat/force, endeavor to influence/intimidate/impede a juror/witness/court officer, in the discharge of his duty. The witness reports that Mink threatened an officer with bodily harm if he testified in court in an assault case.

Shooting victims (of two separate incidents) were identified yesterday as Stacy McDonald, 32, and William Lowe, 43. Also, in Woodlwan, two men were stabbed outside the bowling alley.

In Germantown, 25-year-old nutjob Roxanna Benavides is charged with arson and reckless endangerment after getting pissed at her boyfriend and setting "personal items" on fire. Seventy-five people were displaced, it took 100 firefighters to extinguish the blaze and damages are estimated at $2.5 million.

Intriguing item among the usual stuff stolen in the Northern District, "sensitive papers were stolen from Johns Hopkins University." For what it's worth, JHU was recently declared the main Homeland Security Center of Excellence and given $15 million to study disaster readiness. The Quaker-founded U also develops missles and other WMDs (though not at the Homewood campus).

Citizens beware dept: pugalistic drunk Sidney Ponson is back on the streets after serving five days in protective custody for this third DUI. Also, the are cat burglar(s) on the loose in Howard County, particularly active in the Ellicott City area.

Nineteen-year-old Johnathan Myers was shot in the hand in Crofton, and in Annapolis, an iPod was stolen from a police car.

December 18

Two men were fatally shot last night: Byron Lee Bell, 24, and an as-yet-unidentified man who was shot at Belnord Avenue and Orleans Street.

Twenty-five-year-old Jermaine Bailey was shot to death in Laurel.