7 Eleven

Three 7-Eleven stores in three high-crime areas in Baltimore are offering coupons worth $107.11 in store products for every gun turned in on July 11, company officials said yesterday.The "Guns for Goods" swap is similar to previous area gun turn-in programs -- no questions are asked, and every type of gun is accepted -- but is more generous in its exchange offer."A hundred and seven dollars and 11 cents will buy you a lot of Slurpees," said Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for Southland Corp.

There are plenty of jokes about police officers spending so much time at stores having doughnuts and coffee that they might as well set up shop.Today, the Baltimore County police will do just that.The county's first police community network center will open at a 7-Eleven store in the 4300 block of Annapolis Road in Baltimore Highlands. The store donated space and provided a desk and telephone for officers to write reports and make calls.Mark T. Nevins, 7-Eleven loss-prevention manager for the Northeast states, said the company's cooperative program with law enforcement agencies is designed to keep patrol officers from having to leave the area when they need to do desk work.

The corporation that owns the national chain of 7-Eleven convenience stores has sued a Fallston man, claiming he owes the company $23,240 from a terminated franchise agreement.Southland Corp. is charging Charles L. Birmingham, of the 2300 block of Belair Road, with breach of contract for a new 7-Eleven convenience store in Randallstown, Baltimore County.In the suit, filed June 23, the Dallas-based company contends it provided Birmingham with advertising, merchandising, bookkeeping and training services for new stores.

7-Eleven Inc. is responsible for the leak of a gasoline additive that threatened Aberdeen's water supply, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. The source of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, discovered in Aberdeen's wells two years ago was the 7-Eleven store on South Philadelphia Road, just across the highway from the city's well field, state officials said. The state's investigation found a crushed vent line in the gas station's underground tanks. Tanks are vented to allow fumes to escape into the air, where they dissipate.

TOKYO - Japan's largest retailer, Seven & I Holdings, said yesterday that it was offering $1 billion to buy the 27 percent of 7-Eleven, the ubiquitous U.S. convenience store chain, that it does not already own. The deal is one of the biggest investments by a Japanese company in the United States in recent years, and it would make 7-Eleven a fully owned subsidiary of the Japanese company. 7-Eleven, founded in Dallas 78 years ago, pioneered the concept of small grocery stores offering convenient long hours and grew into the largest such company in the world.

Now at your Baltimore-area 7-Eleven: cell phones. The Dallas-based convenience-store chain today introduced a prepaid wireless telephone under its own brand name. Under the "Speak Out" program, customers can buy a Nokia phone for as little as $50 that operates on the Cingular Wireless network. The telephones are preprogrammed and the batteries pre-charged. Airtime charges are 20 cents per minute for local or long-distance calling. The phones are being sold at 7-Eleven stores in 14 cities, including the 128 outlets in the Baltimore area.

A Frederick man who forced a female clerk at a New Windsor convenience store to undress and remain on a freezer floor during a robbery in July 1997 was convicted yesterday in Carroll Circuit Court.By making an Alford plea, Joseph T. Savage Jr., 40, a former Westminster resident, did not admit guilt but agreed that the state had sufficient evidence to convict him of the robbery.In a statement of the facts, prosecutor Theresa M. Adams said Savage made off with about $20 from the 7-Eleven in the 2800 block of New Windsor Road on July 17, 1997, and also took about $20 from the victim's pockets.

Alevtina "Alina" Zhilina came to the United States in 1996 from Belarus in eastern Europe, where her parents still live. The 40-year-old woman was described as a quiet, private person who liked to read, wanted to work nights and sometimes walked about three miles to her job at the Columbia 7-Eleven where she was fatally shot early Thursday. Howard County police were searching yesterday for a man seen running from the convenience store in the 5700 block of Columbia Road in Running Brook just after the 3:10 a.m. shooting.

State officials have identified fuel tanks at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Aberdeen as at least one potential source of a gasoline additive contaminating that city's public drinking water supply. The Maryland Department of the Environment ordered 7-Eleven Inc. in an Aug. 13 letter to perform additional ground-water and soil sampling at its store at 602 S. Philadelphia Road after "extremely high concentrations" of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, were detected beneath the store's underground fuel tanks.

Suspect sought in 7-Eleven robberyCounty police are searching for a Severn man wanted in the May 12 robbery of a 7-Eleven store in the 500 block of Donaldson Ave.Two men were caught at the scene, while a third man escaped. Police recovered the gun and lifted fingerprints from it and from the cash register. The fingerprints matched those of the suspect who remains at large.The suspect, Roland Leroy Jones, 37, of the 1800 block of Circle Road, is being sought on charges of armed robbery, police said.