Allegany County

Westmar of Allegany County successfully defended its girls Class 1A state title, defeating North Caroline of Caroline County, 76-58, in the finals at Catonsville Community College last night.Dawn Sloan led the Lady Cats (22-1) with 23 points. Julie McGowan and Marcie Wildman each added 15. Lisa Green also added 13.Leading, 38-28, at halftime, Westmar outscored the Bulldogs (19-3), 21-12, in the third quarter, to increase its lead to 59-40.

Remember where you were Dec. 10-12, 1992? Maryland was in the middle of a three-day nor'easter, one of the worst ever to strike the region. Wind and 10-foot waves caused flooding in Ocean City. BWI clocked 3.3 inches of rain and 120,000 people in the region lost power. Two feet of snow landed on Allegany County, 3 feet in Garrett, stranding drivers, knocking down trees and utility lines. Hurricane-force winds and waves smacked the coast from here to New England. This week looks way better.

CLARIFICATION An article in yesterday's editions might have created an erroneous impression regarding an Allegany County Circuit Court judge's order concerning Terrapin Run, a proposed development in Western Maryland. The judge ordered the county Board of Zoning Appeals to reconsider Terrapin Run, using a tougher standard for deciding whether the project is consistent with the county's comprehensive plan.

CUMBERLAND -- The Allegany County sheriff has fired two jail guards who were on duty the night former guard Sandra Kay Beeman is charged with helping two inmates, one of whom was her professed lover, to escape.The guards, Michelle M. Puderbaugh, 47, of Cumberland and Gary C. Huffman, 36, of Cresaptown, were dismissed last month "as a result of violations of standard operating procedures," said Sheriff Gary Simpson.Mrs. Puderbaugh and Mr. Huffman said they were told they failed to follow procedures the night of Aug. 29, when inmates Edgar Eugene Kerns and James Vernon Barnes escaped from the jail.

An escapee from the Allegany County Detention Center and a prison guard who allegedly helped him flee were in the custody today of Canadian police in Hamilton, Ontario.The escapee, Edgar Eugene Kerns Jr., 30, of Martinsburg, W.Va., and guard Sandra Kay Beeman, 46, of Frostburg, were arrested at 4 a.m. yesterday after a Hamilton motel employee recognized them on the "Unsolved Mysteries" television program and called police, said Gary Simpson, an Allegany County undersheriff.Police tracked the pair to a second hotel in Hamilton, where they had moved shortly before the television show aired.

In two Western Maryland communities, people are battling efforts to bring in trash from other states that are running out of landfill space -- a fight that state environmental officials have so far refused to join.Along the Potomac River, in the Frederick County town of Point of Rocks, residents formed a group called Halt Imported Trash (HIT) to protest a proposed recycling business that would take in more than 1,000 tons of trash daily, much of it from other states.And about 90 miles west, a coalition of local groups is lobbying Allegany County officials against a proposal from a private waste management firm to truck in more than 600,000 tons of trash annually to a landfill in Vale Summit now under construction.

Allegany County: Grantsville Truck driver charged with making threats A truck driver from Cumberland has been charged with threatening an Allegany County District Court judge, a witness and area police officers, authorities said. John W. McKenzie Jr., 55, was arrested Saturday by SWAT team members and undercover police officers in Grantsville, the Cumberland Times-News reported. He was being held yesterday on $2.5 million bond, with a bond review scheduled for today. McKenzie was charged with one count of threatening a state official, two counts of obstruction of justice, seven counts of extortion and one count of witness retaliation.

A 3-year-old girl and her grandmother were killed yesterday when the car they were riding in veered out of control and struck an abandoned tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder of the road in Allegany County.The driver of the car -- who state police said was the girl's mother and the woman's daughter -- was hospitalized with serious internal injuries.Police said Ashley Nicole Merrbach and Shirley Elousie Merrbach, 56, both of Grantsville in Garrett County, were dead at the scene.The accident occurred shortly before 10 a.m. in the eastbound lane of Interstate 68 at George's Creek Road in Allegany County, about three miles from the Garrett County line.

The Maryland Department of the Environment fined two Allegany County companies yesterday for violating water-quality standards in the Potomac River basin, the state announced. After the department filed a complaint in Allegany County Circuit Court, the Upper Potomac River Commission was fined $360,000. The commission treats industrial and municipal waste. Westvaco Corp., which operates a paper mill in the region, was fined $90,000. Neither company admitted wrongdoing. As part of the agreement, the Department of the Environment also required the river commission to complete upgrades to its plant by Nov. 1 and to be in compliance with state water-quality standards by April 30, 2002.

Frostburg and the mountains of western Allegany County are under a freeze warning Monday night into Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. It is one of Maryland's first freezes of the season, as the coming winter cold marches east and into gradually lower elevations. The timing is just about right on schedule. Temperatures are expected to reach 30-32 degrees overnight along a slice of Allegany County and the West Virginia panhandle. They won't be the first freezing temperatures seen in Maryland so far this season. Garrett County Airport hit 32 degrees early Monday morning and has barely risen warmer than that, at 36 degrees as of 2 p.m. According to a Utah State University database of frost and freeze dates, the cold temperatures are arriving more or less on time.