Accidentally

The death of a 22-year-old New York man whose body was found in the Isle of Wight Bay in Ocean City in May was ruled accidental this week by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to Ocean City police. Lance Corey Gaines, of Groton, N.Y., was ruled to have died of drowning, hypothermia and cardiomegaly - or an enlarged heart - after going missing from a local bar about 1 a.m. April 21, according to police. Gaines, who had been visiting the beach town with his family, was last seen at The Sandbar on 33rd Street and Coastal Highway, police said.

Autopsies showed that deaths of a father and his two teenage sons found in a Kent County manure pit Thursday were accidental. Maryland State Police said Glen W. Nolt, 48, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., died of suffocation during a farming accident. Their bodies were recovered from a pond of liquid manure at Centerdel Farm, a 200-acre dairy farm in the 12000 block of Vansant Corner Road in Kennedyville. Multiple injuries contributed to Cleason Nolt's death, police said.

— Many farmers in this rural Kent County community were left shaken after a father and his two teenage sons were found dead early Thursday in a pond full of liquid manure on a local dairy farm. The deaths appear to be accidental, but investigators will wait for autopsy results before ruling out foul play, said Greg Shipley, Maryland State Police spokesman. The bodies, tentatively identified as those of Glen W. Nolt, 48, and his two sons, Kelvin R. Nolt, 18, and Cleason S. Nolt, 14, all of Peach Bottom, Pa., had taken hours to find, submerged in a 20-foot-deep, 2-million-gallon manure pit on Centerdel Farm, state police said.

It's a parent's worst nightmare. A father from Forest Hill accidentally backed his lawn mower into his five-year-old daughter, severing her feet. The accident happened at about 6:30 p.m. Monday when many in the neighborhood were out doing evening yard work, said Rich Gardiner, spokesman for The Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association. The father didn't see the child when he put the mower in reverse, Gardiner said. He only heard her screams. The girl was flown to Johns Hopkins Children's Center where her feet could not be saved, he said.

A 21-year-old man has been served with a warrant charging him with possession of the rifle allegedly used by a younger relative to fatally shoot 13-year-old Monae Turnage last month in East Baltimore, officials said. Martinez Armstrong of the 1800 block of N. Bond St. was charged with being a felon in possession of a gun and reckless endangerment after investigators made a forensic match on the .22-caliber rifle. Court records show he was being held on $500,000 bond. Two boys were charged last month with involuntary manslaughter for accidentally shooting Monae, whose body was found hidden under trash bags in her Darley Park neighborhood after she had left her home to go roller-skating.

Services are set for Tuesday, Feb. 28, for Randall P. Worthington Sr., a prominent Harford County businessman and a member of the Harford County Liquor Control Board, who was killed in an accidental shooting Wednesday morning. Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the First Presbyterian Church at 224 N. Main St. in Bel Air. Interment, which will be private, will be at Darlington Cemetery. There won't be any visitation. Around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Harford County Sheriff's Office received a call for an unattended death.

An aspiring professional wrestler died last week after he struck his head while practicing maneuvers at a Severn wrestling school, Anne Arundel County police said Wednesday. Quentin Latrell Washington, 25, of District Heights in Prince George's County died Friday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center of injuries he sustained last Thursday evening at Gillberg's Pro Wrestling Academy. An investigation by homicide detectives uncovered no indication of foul play or suspicious circumstances surrounding Washington's death, police said.

Morgan State men's basketball coach Todd Bozeman said Sunday night that he has been suspended with pay by athletic director Floyd Kerr as a result of an incident toward the end of the team's road victory at South Carolina State on Saturday. Bozeman said that he was called by Kerr around 11 p.m., Sunday to inform him that he was suspended pending an investigation into the incident, which involved what Bozeman had characterized as "accidental contact" with senior guard Larry Bastfield.

For as long as Thomas Mech can remember, the Saturday after Thanksgiving was reserved for hunting. As a boy growing up in Dundalk, Mech recalled how his father and some of his neighbors would drive down to the Eastern Shore and up to Cumberland or Frederick. "They would fight to see who could get off that week," Mech recalled. When he was 13, Mech finally got to join them. "It's a Maryland tradition," Mech said. "It's in my blood. " That tradition might have ended, or at least been significantly altered, for Mech earlier this month.

Police were on an undercover sting targeting a man in a marijuana case in Anne Arundel County when one officer accidentally shot a colleague, according to court documents filed Tuesday. The suspect had already been arrested outside a home in Odenton on Monday afternoon when officers on a multi-jurisdictional task force raided the residence in the 100 block of Pinecove Ave. Police found a female occupant, described as cooperative, and spread out through the house. Authorities said a Baltimore County officer accidentally fired his gun, striking a city officer in the arm. On Tuesday, Anne Arundel County police said for the first time that the city officer returned fire with several shots, but did not hit anyone.