7 Eleven

Two Howard County 7-Eleven stores were held up this week, county police said yesterday. The 7-Eleven in the 9400 block of Frederick Road in Ellicott City was robbed late Tuesday and the 7-Eleven in the 5700 block of Columbia Road in Columbia was robbed late Sunday, police said. Minutes before the Tuesday robbery, police said an employee arriving at work saw a man in his late teens wearing a black hooded sweat shirt using a pay phone outside the store. The man, described to police as black, 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 10 inches and 150 to 160 pounds, entered the store about 11 p.m. and announced a robbery.

A Mount Vernon group says it has failed to prevent a 7-Eleven from opening in a former restaurant overlooking the Washington Monument. City agencies, cultural groups and neighbors pledged $297,000 toward an effort to buy the building and stop the convenience store, but R. Paul Warren, who organized the effort, said his group stopped making offers when the price reached $450,000. "We reached our limit," Warren said. "We raised $300,000 in three weeks. That's not bad." Gregory N. Friedman, a real estate investor-broker, bought the former Buttery restaurant on the ground floor of a 19th-century building at Charles and Centre streets this year for $310,000.

The owner of a Northwest Baltimore 7-Eleven who allegedly shot and killed a man after chasing after him from the store in a car last year was sued for $4 million along with the Southland Corp. yesterday by the dead man's parents.Andre L. Burton, a 24-year-old barber, was fatally shot in the back on July 24, about three blocks from the 7-Eleven store in the 6400 block of Reisterstown Road. Police arrested the store's owner, 50-year-old John Howard Johnson of Cockeysville, about an hour later at a nearby fast-food restaurant.

County police arrested two men from Odenton and a Glen Burnie teen-ager early Friday in connection with the armed robbery of a 7-Eleven store in the 500 block of Donaldson Ave. in Severn.Three men, two of them waving what appeared to be handguns, walked into the store at 4 a.m. and told the cashier they would shoot her if she did not quickly turn over all the cash, police said.The clerk complied, police said, and the bandits, wearing handkerchiefs over their faces and gloves, placed the money in a plastic bag and left the store.

They gave away their guns and rifles yesterday for Slurpees, Big Gulps, cookies and ice cream.The idea to give away $107.11 in coupons for each gun received made 7-Eleven's "Guns for Goods" swap Baltimore's most successful gun turn-in program in recent years, as 138 firearms -- 88 pistols and 50 rifles and shotguns -- were turned in at three of the convenience stores."

Southland Corp. is in the last week of a six-week promotion at its 7-Eleven stores called Sound Off, where customers are asked to give responses to amusing but debatable questions on life.Dallas-based Southland, which recently restructured under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, hopes the promotion will increase traffic and sales at its 847 stores in the Baltimore-Washington area and more than 5,700 others around the country.For the first two weeks of Sound Off, which started Feb. 18, the numbers look promising.

As much as some people in Mount Vernon would like to have a 7-Eleven store around the corner, I truly feel that the proposed new store would be a huge mistake ("Bid to block 7-Eleven in Mount Vernon falls short," Nov. 25). If you have ever driven the 1000 block of Calvert St., I'm sure you know that it's often necessary to be in the left-hand lane a block before you get to the 7-Eleven because it's a given that someone will be double-parked there, blocking the right-hand lane while grabbing whatever it is he or she needs in the 7-Eleven on that block.

Two $300 money orders were stolen from a 7-Eleven in the 3400 block of Old Annapolis Road in Laurel Saturday, county police said.A man walked into the store shortly after 10:30 a.m. Saturday and asked for the money orders, police said. He gave the clerk $600, then, as the clerk processed the money orders, reached over the counter and snatched the money orders and his $600, police said.

As visitors descend on Baltimore during the summer tourism season, staff writer Larry Bingham offers an occasional look at how the city has been portrayed by writers over the years. Today, an excerpt from local author Jonathon Scott Fuqua's 1998 young-adult novel The Reappearance of Sam Webber. In the story, the 11-year-old protagonist has moved from Rodgers Forge to Charles Village. "I looked around at the ground, at Ditch's torn-up work boots, splats of white paint across the toes. `There's a 7-Eleven near here?

It was not a bright idea, police said. The same robber, stealing twice from the same Northeast Baltimore convenience store, on the very same day.But police have charged David Bright, 28, of no known address with robbing the 7-Eleven at 2910 Harford Road twice Tuesday. And officers say his arrest and booking yesterday may be the least of his pains."I've seen them come back to do the same crime, but never on the same day," said Sgt. Frank Wagner of the Northeastern District. "Nobody ever said he was brilliant."