Armored

What's for dinner Armadillos eat ants, termites, maggots and sometimes plants. Although pink and soft when it is born, the armadillo will grow hard, bony body plates to protect it from predators. Even its tail is armored! These tough animals live in dry areas of the western United States and throughout South America--using a long sticky tongue, a good sense of smell and sharp claws to find food.

A federal judge sentenced two partners in an armored-car stick up crew to 32 years and a day each in prison. Erick Wilson, 28 from Columbia and David Marquise Howard, 29, from Baltimore held up employees of Dunbar Armored at gunpoint, stealing cash from them. The robberies, carried out in Maryland and Washington, D.C., took place between 2008 and 2011, earning the pair and their crew $765,000. Wilson was sentenced Wednesday and Howard Tuesday. Both pleaded guilty to six robberies.

Dundalk-based Federal Armored Express Inc., the nation's fourth-largest armored transportation company, has bought the customer accounts of Loomis Armored Inc. in Washington, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia for an undisclosed amount."

Dunbar Armored has been in the armored-car business for nearly 90 years. But the Hunt Valley-based company now is branching into a new way to protect banks' and businesses' money and valuables: cybersecurity. The company is launching a subsidiary, Dunbar Digital Armored, early next year to tap into the growing need to protect online transactions for its thousands of bank and retail customers. Dunbar will focus its cybersecurity products on small and mid-size companies that are looking for tech-savvy solutions but don't have the deep pockets or cybersecurity expertise of the big banks.

FAIRFIELD, Ohio -- Amid the Cadillacs, Chevy Caprices and Mercedes Benzes in stages of repair on the factory floor at O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt stands a white, gold-trimmed Grand Jeep Cherokee. A limited edition in more ways than one.It may look like a yuppie plaything. But looks can be deceiving. This four-wheel-drive suburban hill-climber is endowed with protective armor to deflect bullets from 9 mm and .357 Magnum handguns, or an Uzi machine pistol. And if a sharpshooter flattens the tires with four fast ones, the Jeep can speed away on its specially equipped nylon flat rims.

Floyd Dwight Burch, a retired armored-car supervisor and World War II Marine Corps veteran, died from complications of lupus Friday at Harford Memorial Hospital. The Churchville resident was 80. Mr. Burch was born in Hughesville, and after the death of his parents he was sent to the Episcopal Home for Children in Chevy Chase. He attended Montgomery County public schools through the eighth grade. Although the legal age for military enlistment was 18, he misled Marine recruiters and signed up when he was 17, family members said.

A Howard County judge denied yesterday a request for a reduced sentence from a man serving a life term for the murder of an armored-car guard.Tyrone M. Colbert, 31, was sentenced to life plus 20 years after pleading guilty to the January 1989 robbery and slaying of Frederick John Cook, a 23-year veteran of Loomis Armored."

WASHINGTON -- The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said. Vehicles such as the Cougar and the M1117 Armored Security Vehicle have proven ability to save lives, but production started late and relatively small numbers are in use in Iraq, mostly because of money shortages, industry officials said.

Dec. 4 Armored: (Screen Gems) Officers at an armored transport security firm risk their lives when they embark on a heist against their own company. With Matt Dillon, Jean Reno and Laurence Fishburne. Brothers : (Lionsgate) When a decorated Marine goes missing in Afghanistan, his black-sheep younger brother cares for his wife and children at home. With Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard. Everybody's Fine: (Miramax) In this remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's "Stanno Tutti Bene," a widower embarks on an impromptu road trip to reconnect with each of his grown children.

Two gunmen robbed an armored car delivering money to an Elkridge bank yesterday, police said. Both of the robbers fled and were being sought by police. The amount stolen from the armored car was not disclosed. Police said the Brinks car arrived at the FCNB Bank in the 7200 block of Montgomery Road shortly before 10 a.m. Two guards were with the car, and as one of them unloaded cash from the vehicle, a blue pickup truck backed up to it. Two men brandishing handguns got out of the truck.

A Baltimore man who helped rob hundreds of thousands of dollars and multiple handguns from five armored vehicle drivers over the course of three years pleaded guilty to multiple robbery and gun charges Thursday, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's office. David Marquise Howard, 27 — who is also listed as having addresses in Owings Mills and Hyattsville in federal court documents — participated in stealing a total of $555,000 in the robberies, which he planned and staged from 2009 to 2011 with four others, according to his plea agreement.

The suspect in the Colorado movie theater shootings is not and has never been a member of the armed forces, the Pentagon said Friday. Authorities say shooting suspect James Holmes carried an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun and wore full body armor during the attack that left 12 dead and dozens injured at the theater in Aurora, Colo. Police say his apartment was rigged with explosives. The Pentagon said two airmen and one sailor were injured in the attack. Another sailor who was known to have been at the theater was unaccounted for. Aurora is home to Buckley Air Force Base, and an hour's drive from the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs.

A Beverly Hills sports drink maker being sued by Baltimore-based Under Armour Inc. says the trademark infringement lawsuit is without merit, according to court documents filed Thursday. The lawsuit filed April 26 in U.S. District Court in Baltimore says drink maker Body Armor Nutrition LLC uses a brand name and logo that confuses consumers. The complaint seeks an injunction banning the California company from using the name Body Armor and a logo and tagline that Under Armour says is similar to its own. Body Armor's court filing says it would be nearly impossible for consumers to confuse brands that sell unrelated products.

Inside a two-story, cylindrical metal structure at Aberdeen Proving Ground, scientists detonate a homemade bomb to take high-speed pictures of the shrapnel flying apart. Elsewhere on the Army installation in Harford County, soldiers train on radio jammers intended to render enemy remote controls useless. At still another location, inventors work on hand-held test kits that will enable troops to identify chemicals used by bomb makers. All of the activity is aimed at stopping the signature weapon of the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq: the improvised explosive device, the IED, which has been responsible for more than half the American combat deaths over the past decade and many of the brain injuries and amputations.

The Johns Hopkins University will use a $90 million award to form an institute that will help the Army develop lightweight materials to better protect soldiers and vehicles, university officials said Wednesday. The Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute will focus on what happens to protective materials at the moment of intense impact. "Both individuals and governments have become increasingly insecure over the last 10 years or so," said K.T. Ramesh, the professor who will direct the institute.

Maryland State Police are pleading with motorists who scooped up cash that fell out of an armored truck along a Montgomery County highway this morning to return it. No questions asked. No charges filed. Just bring it to the Rockville Barracks. About $5,000 spilled onto I-270 and police said people stopped and gathered the bills as the truck's driver sped along the road. The Washington Post is reporting that only about $100 has been recovered . What would you do?

A Columbia man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and armed robbery yesterday in the slaying of an armored-car guard, in exchange for a sentence of life plus 20 years.Assistant state's attorney Timothy Wolf, who prosecuted the case, said Tyrone Colbert, 29, could have received life plus 40 years in the shooting death of Frederick John Cook Jr. of Middle River.Mr. Cook, a guard for the Loomis Armored car company, was slain Jan. 11, 1990, outside the Signet Bank at Long Reach Village Center in Columbia.

The days of using two-dimensional X-rays to analyze body armor, troop helmets and projectiles have just been put behind Chesapeake Testing. That's because Chesapeake, a small company with its own firing ranges and ballistics analysis equipment, has moved into 3D. The firm invested a few million dollars building out its capacity for the next generation in materials analysis: powerful CT scan technology. The Belcamp company this year acquired a 225-450kV microfocus X-ray and computer tomography system — one of only three in the world made by its manufacturer, Nikon.

Here's the difference between Paul Day and the rest of the world: Where most people see a broken-down ATV on the side of an interstate, Day sees a Transformer. Not only does he see it, but he turns it into one. Which is why, unlike the average citizen, he's an award-winning creator of superhero costumes. "Yeah, I found parts of Bumblebee on the side of I-95," says Day, 45, whose take on the most outgoing of the Transformers, that alien race that can turn themselves into motor vehicles, won 2009's inaugural Baltimore Comic-Con costume contest.