Arrest

The defense attorney for 28-year-old Michael Johnson, charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Phylicia Barnes, told reporters on Thursday that his client had been struck and kicked during his arrest. He disputed a statement from the city's top prosecutor that the arrest went down "without incident. " But trying to track down what actually happened has been a frustrating ordeal, not just on the allegations of mistreatment, but the aura of secrecy surrounding this high-profile case.

Descriptions from witnesses entered into a database helped Baltimore County police arrest a suspect in the shooting of a female employee during an attempted store robbery Friday night. The victim was shot in the leg when she panicked and was unable to open the cash register during a holdup at Salvo Auto Parts in the 7000 block of Liberty Road, police said. The descriptions produced photos of five men, including Derek Lamont Murray, 27, who was arrested Monday night at his home in the 3600 block of Campfield Road in Lochearn and charged with attempted first-degree murder, attempted armed robbery and using a handgun in the commission of a felony, police said.

A Howard County Circuit Court jury rejected a civil lawsuit against six Baltimore police officers brought by the mother of a then-7-year-old boy arrested for illegally riding a dirt bike and who was later handcuffed to a bench at police headquarters. Judge Diane Leasure sent the case to the jury Thursday morning after determining that two of the officers acted unlawfully in arresting the boy because they didn't witness the incident. Nonetheless, Lakisa Dinkins' suit for more than $700,000 in compensatory damages was denied.

A 44-year-old Owings Mills man was arrested and charged last week in connection with the illegal dumping of more than 100 pounds of construction debris in Upton, officials said yesterday. Tommy Ray Whitehead was arrested Wednesday while at District Court on Patapsco Avenue for another illegal dumping case, city officials said. In the most recent case, police have accused Whitehead of dumping debris in a community garden in the 1200 block of Shields Place. The Sun reported last month that a huge pile of debris - including a brown house door, insulation resembling pink cotton candy and planks of wood and bricks - was left in a grassy alleyway on Shields Place that had been converted into a community garden.

A 19-year-old man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a 53-year-old father during a fight Saturday night outside the victim's home in Baltimore's Poppleton community, according to a police spokesman. Police arrested Kendall Jones on Monday at his girlfriend's house in the 4200 block of Seidel Ave., said Agent Donny Moses, the spokesman. Jones is accused of shooting Ashley Harper, who was called out of his house in the 700 block of W. Lexington St. after his sons and sons' friends were assaulted by a group of people about 10 p.m. Saturday, Moses said.

SHORTLY BEFORE midnight last Tuesday, Israeli police took Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian moderate, from his home in a Jerusalem suburb. He was told that he was being put in "administrative detention" -- prison -- for six months.In the middle of a war, with Scud missiles threatening the lives of civilians in Israel, one more detention without trial may seem unimportant.But this one mattered. It sent an ominous signal to those, in Washington and elsewhere, who have been talking about the hope of new peace and security arrangements for the Middle pTC East after the war.Nusseibeh is a professor of philosophy at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, 41, a graduate of Oxford.

Baltimore police confirmed that homicide detectives have made an arrest in the Dec. 12 killing of a 25-year-old mother and dancer on The Block who was found shot to death near Leakin Park. Hassan Muhammed, 32, of the 1600 block of Guilford Ave., is charged with first-degree murder and related charges in the killing of Cherrie Gammon, online court records show. He was arrested on Jan. 17 at 5:30 a.m., police said. Gammon's body was found on the side of the road in the 1400 block of N. Franklintown Road.

In August 2008, a group of friends were walking through the Inner Harbor early in the morning when they heard a scream and a splash. When they turned around, 22-year-old Ankush Gupta was gone. No one saw what happened, nor could the harbor's network of security cameras provide an account. With no evidence of trauma to the body, the only conclusive information investigators had about the Montgomery County man's death was that he had drowned. On Tuesday, city homicide detectives arrested a 20-year-old Curtis Bay man who confessed to pushing Gupta into the water.

A match from a national DNA database lead to an arrest in a 2004 rape in which the woman was attacked at knifepoint in a Columbia laundry room, Howard County police said. Gary Sental Taylor, 30, of Norwalk, Conn., who was arrested last month in that state, faces first- and second-degree rape charges for a rape that occurred Aug. 6, 2004, at the Grande Point Apartments in the 5700 block of Stevens Forest Road in Columbia, police said. After the incident, police collected DNA evidence from the woman's clothing and sent it to the Maryland State Police crime lab to develop a DNA profile.

A spray-paint artist who was arrested on a charge of peddling without a permit at Baltimore's Inner Harbor will stand trial next month after a judge deferred ruling Tuesday on the complex First Amendment issues at stake. District Judge George M. Lipman tried to resolve the case without a constitutional debate over free-speech rights — an unusual issue in the state's lowest court. At the Patapsco Avenue courthouse, judges deal mainly with a parade of miscreants, traffic scofflaws and low-level drug arrests.