Arbutus

A father and two sons hiking near Sulphur Spring Road in Arbutus in Southwestern Baltimore County discovered a decomposed body in a wooded area yesterday evening, authorities reported.Police said the body was so badly decomposed that neither the race nor gender of the person was known last night. A spokesman was unable to say whether the body was clothed, or if any personal items were found at the scene.The body was taken to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy to determine its identity and the cause of death.

Police have charged a Baltimore County teen-ager with robbing a Linthicum bank Wednesday.Bruce Wayne Setherley, 17, of the 1700 block of Carroll Ave. in Arbutus, was charged with robbery with a deadly weapon and assault with intent to murder. No bail information was available.Police said a man walked into the Signet Bank in the 700 block of Hammonds Ferry Road about 10: 45 a.m., walked over to a teller, pulled up his sweater and pointed to what he said was a gun.The man demanded cash and, when the teller complied, walked out of the bank and headed north on Nursery Road, police said.

A minor earthquake was detected yesterday morning in Arbutus, but there was no damage and no reports of injuries, officials said. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that a quake measuring 1.0 on the Richter scale struck about a mile west of the southwestern Baltimore County community about 8:30 a.m. The tremor, reported on the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site, was detected at a depth of about three miles on a seismograph at the Soldiers Delight Reporting...

Kathryn Kostinsky, a retired Arbutus restaurant owner, died Sept. 18 at the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville. She was 83. Family members said no cause of death was established, but she had suffered strokes and had a history of heart disease. Born Kathryn Kirkwood in Baltimore, she was a Mount DeSales Academy of the Visitation graduate. She later received an associate's degree in nursing from Catonsville Community College. With her husband, Leon Kostinsky, she opened K's Carryout at Edmondson Avenue and Monroe Street in Baltimore nearly 50 years ago. In 1965, she and her husband opened Sorrento of Arbutus, an East Drive pizza and sub shop.

An Arbutus man has been arrested and charged with sex offenses for allegedly attacking a 23-year-old Elkridge woman while she slept in her bedroom Saturday morning.The victim said that she and some friends had gone out the previous night and had returned to her home.Police said the suspect, who had met the victim through mutual friends a few hours earlier, entered the victim's bedroom at 6 a.m. and woke her while kissing and fondling her. The woman screamed and resisted the attack, freed herself and called police.

An Arbutus man sentenced in 1991 for housebreaking and theft during a four-day crime spree near Mount Airy was convicted of violating probation and sentenced yesterday to three years in prison.Homer P. Shaffer, 31, served two years of his original five-year sentence -- three years were suspended -- and was placed on five years of probation after being released.Court records show that Shaffer was arrested on kidnapping and assault charges in Baltimore County in 1996, a violation of his probation.

A fire early yesterday that consumed an Arbutus apartment house killed one man and left several people homeless.Firefighters responding to the blaze at 1332 Stevens Ave. at 3 a.m. found the second story of the house engulfed in flames and two men stranded on the roof.The men, who lived on the second floor, escaped using ladders, and a third man was pulled to safety through the window of his first-floor apartment.Two other tenants escaped on their own.The victim, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of relatives, was found dead in the second-floor unit where the blaze apparently began.

An Arbutus man who maintained his innocence since his arrest last June on charges arising from an armed robbery at an Elkridge liquor store has been found not guilty by a Howard Circuit Court jury.Dennis Edwin O'Donnell Jr., 34, was acquitted of armed robbery, robbery and a weapons violation by a jury of seven women and five men that deliberated about 2 1/2 hours Thursday.Mr. O'Donnell was accused of pulling a revolver on the owner of the Elkridge Liquors shop in the 5800 block of Washington Blvd.

When Arlene Anderson became manager of the Arbutus branch of the Baltimore County Library on Sulphur Spring Road eight years ago, she said, the patrons were "mostly older, retired people."However, that's changed dramatically, and the library staff is hoping to change, too, if the County Council approves a proposal to move the branch across the street into a warehouse in an industrial park.Since 1985, the volume of books and other materials circulated from the Arbutus branch has increased by 79 percent -- a reflection of the new homes being built in the southwestern county and the increasing numbers of young families with children replacing the older residents.

Dinosaurs in Arbutus? So says a history book being published about the southwest Baltimore County community, referring to discoveries of fossilized dinosaur bones in Arbutus in the 1990s that were estimated to be more than 100 million years old. The book, "Arbutus: A Historical Scrapbook," was started four years ago as a brochure to help real estate agents sell houses in the community, said Donna Cameron, who organized the project. Each bit of information gathered, however, made the 30 contributors more curious.