Moments after the 32-year-old former music director of West Baltimore's Bethel AME Church was sentenced yesterday to seven years in prison for having sex with a 12-year-old parishioner, he collapsed in the courtroom, setting off a screaming match between two families that ended with the defendant's mother unresponsive and shaking on the hallway floor.
Timothy D. Price III of Owings Mills was revived moments later and heard Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert B. Kershaw's final post-sentencing remarks about his conviction for second-degree rape of the girl. His mother was still lying in the hallway, as paramedics worked to revive her, nearly 15 minutes later.
The drama that prompted sheriff's deputies to clear the courtroom followed an emotion-racked 75-minute hearing in which the girl's mother sobbed her way through a victim impact statement, telling Price that her daughter remained in "love" with Price and was obsessed with protecting him.
"She locks herself in her room, day in and day out, thinking about how to get you out of jail. That's all she talks about is you!"
The girl was not present during the hearing. The Sun does not publish the names of sex crime victims.
Price admitted in May to having sex with the girl, who was 12 at the time. Prosecutors said Price and the girl had sex on three occasions in his car between Dec. 1 and Jan. 15.
The encounters were all off the property of the African Methodist Episcopal Church - twice in a West Baltimore alley and once in a parking lot near Druid Hill Park, according to Assistant State's Attorney Katherine Moxley.
Dressed in blue jeans and a untucked black shirt, Price apologized yesterday to the victim's family in his first public remarks since being arrested in February.
"Every day, I've prayed for you," he told the girl's relatives and friends. "I'm not proud of what I have done. ... I'm committed to making wiser decisions and better choices."
The judge was not impressed.
"I'm troubled, quite frankly, by the statement by Mr. Price that he's not proud of what he did but hopes to make wiser decisions," the judge said before delivering his verdict. "That doesn't even come close to understanding" the nature of his crime.
Kershaw said the sentencing was the most difficult decision he has made in his 2 1/2 years on the bench. He called Price's sexual relationship with his pre-teen victim a "heinous act arising under circumstances that make it unthinkable."
