Friday, January 6, 2006

January 6

Warren Fleming, the man killed yesterday at Security Square mall, was "described as a role model for aspiring young African-American entrepreneurs." He owned the Cingular Wireless store in the mall, as well as a Cingular store in Catonsville. He left behind his wife, a 7-year-old son, and a 5-year-old daughter. Police are investigating the act as a possible carjacking. A car that witnesses spotted at the scene was found at the Owings Mills Metro station with its engine running. As of 8:00 tonight, no arrests have been made in the murder.

34-year-old Raymont Hopewell is being held without bail on charges including five counts of first-degree murder and three counts of first-degree rape. Hopewell is accused of murdering 82-year-old Carlton Crawford in August, 78-year-old Lydia Wingfield (also in August), 78-year-old Sadie Mack in May, 88-year-old Sarah Shannon in 2002, and 60-year-old Constance Wills in 1999. There is no word on whether Hopewell was involved in last year's murders of Jessie Lee Jr (74), Robert Little (88), or Shirley Chisley (64), but investigators are reviewing cases for possible connections.

Dwight Watson has been identified as the cab driver who was murdered by two teenagers on New Year's Eve.

There is some suspicion of murder in the July 2005 death of Army Sgt. Juwan L. Johnson, a Baltimore resident who was finishing out his active duty in Germany before returning home to his pregnant wife. The Purple Heart recipient had survived a mine attack in Iraq, but according to his family he died from traumatic force to the upper torso.

Unique Coleman remained in critical condition at Shock Trauma last night after being shot 11 times and then giving birth. Her boyfriend, Marcel Foster, was shot once in the buttocks during the alleged carjacking.

Three of the four officers who were suspended with pay from the Southwestern district have been indicted on rape charges related to a woman's claim they forced her to have sex with them after arresting her as part of a drug investigation.

A 40-year-old man was arrested after a 36-year-old woman claimed she escaped from a motel room after being tied up for three days.

In the wake of a September 13 incident where a 21-year-old registered sex offender attempted to randomly pick up a child at Glen Burnie Elementary School (charges were later dropped), Gov. Ehrlich has proposed tough new restrictions against sex offenders.

The second Baltimore County mall shooting of the day occurred yesterday at White Marsh Mall. A group of three men got in a fight with a group of four men, and a shot was fired. No one was hurt, the group of three men was arrested, and the gun was recovered.

30-year-old Baltimore City resident Ian McDonald was sentenced to 20 years in prison for carrying crack, pot, and a loaded gun. He was sentenced in federal court, which is part of a strategy that should go into effect within a month and should result in stronger convictions and sentences. McDonald described himself as "an idiot" for breaking the law, and U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein agreed with the assessment.

The family that cooks together books together: 39-year-old Sheila Beil was charged yesterday with running a meth lab in Millersville, one day after her husband, Michael Don Beil, was charged.

Baltimore has been named The Country's Fittest City by Men's Fitness magazine. It must be all of the heroin addiction and bullet holes that keeps us looking so fabulous.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fact we were called the fittest city was posted on a blog of someone i know and i basically said the same thing that the drugs keep baltimoreans thin and lean, which in turn keeps us more spazzed out and on edge in order to be able to run from the bullets and police. I guess we do deserve to be the fittest city... we should have a marathon here where the winner gets a free oz of the drug of choice, with a $20 entry fee... bet we could raise hundreds of thousands for charity then

Anonymous said...

Here's an article about the fittest cities in 2006:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3571373.html

Baltimore definitely takes first, hooray! Too bad my hometown is the fattest.

Anonymous said...

Well, you just know I was gonna offer my .... thoughts... on the 'Fittest City'. Recall that last year we were the 25th fattest city, according to the same magazine. Has anyone seen a miraculous change in our collective waistline this year? I didn't think so.

I've requested the magazine's functional formula for Fitness. I understand that it is significantly influenced by the presence of parkland, of which we have a good deal. It not much of an amenity, however, because there are no police and the parks are unsafe and inaccessible to much of the population.

The rating also apparently relies on the low density of national fast-food chains. Again, I suspect this is true: prospective additional sites for McDonald's here are unsafe after dark for both customers and staff, so only the habitable areas have stores. Further, many of our carryouts are fried chicken/laketrout joints, a different platform from the nationals. These carryouts, however, are hardly healthier, dripping as their product is in undrained fryer-fat.

Back to the miraculous transformation in 52 weeks, the magazine would like to ascribe to Hizzoner Martin the First much of the credit. Is he newly enthroned or something? If he made us all sveldt in 2005, can we sue him for engorging us in 2004? In point of fact, the Mayor has nothing to do with the health of the population, except perhaps for lowering morbidity and mortality among I.V. drug users with targetted Health Dept. interventions.

So, it's just crap. And preposterous at that. Baltimoreans pretty much know that their bodies would be condemned if ever inspected.

The other point is, while some fraction of the population does eat tofu and skinless chicken breast in between riding hi-tech racing bikes and doing Pilates at the Health Club or Spa, the vast majority of our population doesn't have any connection with that lifestyle, and no consideration seems to be given to that fact.

taotechuck said...

Now that I think about it, a lot of the dealers in my neighborhood ride their BMX bikes around. And the people around me who can't afford a car walk everywhere, especially now that the MTA moved bus stops around. So I guess it all makes sense... if the drugs aren't keeping us lean and mean, the walk to the bus stop is.