Autopsy

The body of an unidentified man was found last night in a vacant East Baltimore rowhouse, police said.Police said a man flagged down an officer and told him a body was on the upper floor of a nearby two-story dwelling in the 1700 block of E. North Ave.Police said the man appeared to have been dead for longer than a day, and no visible signs of foul play were on the body.The death was ruled suspicious pending an autopsy.Pub Date: 1/29/99

A defense pathologist challenged the findings of the chief medical examiner's office yesterday in the second day of a macabre trial stemming from the discovery of a mummified corpse in an Essex home last year.Patricia Thomas, 51, is charged with homicide in the death of a disabled woman who checked herself out of a nursing home to move in with Thomas and her family. The body of Marion V. Cusimano, 66, was found decomposing in a bedroom by police last year after Thomas' husband called to report Cusimano's death 14 months after it occurred.

The death of a 21-year-old Laurel man who was found on his living room floor Friday evening is being investigated as a homicide, Laurel police said yesterday.Ryan Odell Mance, 21, of the 1400 block of Chapacove Court was unresponsive when he was discovered by his mother about 5: 30 p.m. Police said someone entered the home, assaulted Mance and took his 1993 mauve GEO Prism.Mance was pronounced dead at the scene from blunt force trauma to the head. Autopsy results reportedly will not be available for several days.

Sir Dirk Bogarde, the British actor who starred in more than 70 films and captured the hearts of many women in the 1950s, has died. He was 78.The British film star, who achieved his greatest fame in "Death in Venice," died of a heart attack at his London home, said his nephew Brock Van den Bogaerde. He suffered a damaging stroke in 1996 and had been under 24-hour nursing care since last May."People forget that Dirk Bogarde was the male hero of Britain for about 20 years," said director Michael Winner.

An autopsy report shows that Larry Hubbard Jr. sustained injuries in a struggle with police before he was shot and killed, and attorneys for his family say the report bolsters their case against the department.Autopsy results, dated yesterday and made available to The Sun, show that Hubbard suffered bruises to his mouth, the left side of his neck, the back of his right hand and fingers, and his groin before he was shot point-blank in the back of the head.Baltimore police Officer Barry W. Hamilton shot and killed Hubbard during an arrest Oct. 7 in the 2000 block of Barclay St.The report did not say whether the injuries were intentionally inflicted or were sustained in Hubbard's attempt to take police Officer Robert J. Quick's gun, as police contend.

An autopsy showed that a man whose body was found Friday on a Northwest Baltimore street died of blunt force trauma to the head and his death was ruled a homicide, police said yesterday.A passer-by found the body about 11 p.m. Friday in the 4500 block of Ridge Ave., between the Reisterstown Road Plaza shopping center and Seton Institute, police said. The man's identity was withheld pending notification of relatives.Pub Date: 3/15/99

DENTON -- A Guatemalan teen-ager who faces a first-degree murder charge in the death last month of her newborn son was returned to jail yesterday, her bail review hearing postponed until the state medical examiner's office determines how the infant died.Defense lawyers and prosecutors said they had little choice but to delay the proceeding for 17-year-old Erminia Escalante-Berduo."Obviously, we can't get to first base in this case without an autopsy report," said Caroline County public defender W. Porter Ellington.

CUMBERLAND -- Attorneys for the unemployed store clerk accused of murdering a Carroll County baby sitter continued their efforts here yesterday to suppress evidence, arguing that some autopsy photos should not be shown to the jury when the trial opens early next year.Yesterday, defense attorneys Jerri Ann Peyton-Braden and Jerome M. Levine told Garrett County Circuit Judge Gary G. Leasure that the photos could unfairly influence a jury."They are being used to inflame the jury," Levine said.

A man found in a shopping cart severely beaten June 22, and who died the next day at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was a homicide victim, police said yesterday.Officers found James Pittman, 30, of the 1300 block of Crofton Road in the cart in the 1500 block of N. Bond St., bleeding from severe wounds to the head and left leg. Police termed his death suspicious, pending an autopsy by the state medical examiner's office.An autopsy report received by police Monday said Pittman died of blunt force injuries.

An unarmed Baltimore teen-ager who was killed by a police officer on Thursday had a hand in his pants pocket when he was shot, which investigators say bolsters the officer's claim that he fired because he thought the youth was going for a gun.Preliminary autopsy results released yesterday by police and the mayor's office show that Eli McCoy, 17, was shot in the upper left chest and left abdomen. Police said a third bullet hit his left pants pocket, traveled through the youth's left hand and into his thigh.

The horrifying death of the Long Island working mom and the four young girls in her van lingers in the troubled hearts of any woman who has ever ended a tough day with the kids or a tough day at the office with a glass of wine - or three or four. It was a Sunday morning in July, and Diane Schuler loaded her 5-year-old son, her 3-year-old daughter and three nieces, ages 8, 7 and 5, into her minivan and departed the family's lakeside camping spot near the Catskills. Her husband, Daniel, put the family dog in his pick-up truck and left, too. It was about 9:30.

LOS ANGELES - - Los Angeles police completed an "extensive interview" Saturday night with the doctor who was with Michael Jackson when the pop star went into cardiac arrest, and a source close to the investigation said detectives found "no red flag" during discussions about the death. A private pathologist, meanwhile, conducted a second autopsy on Jackson's body, hours after it was released to relatives by the Los Angeles County coroner. Coroner's officials had said that Jackson had been using prescription drugs, and the investigation is focused on whether Jackson overdosed.

Prosecutors crafting the cases against the teenagers charged with killing a 14-year-old Crofton boy will have to show a direct connection between the beating of Christopher David Jones and his fall while riding his bicycle shortly afterward, criminal defense lawyers said on Tuesday. Details that could make those links will not be in place for weeks, authorities said. The complete autopsy report probably will not be available for a month, police said. It is expected to shed light on the nature of Jones' injuries, first allegedly at the hands of his attackers, and then as he fell and hit his head when pedaling away.

Maintenance man shot at complex A maintenance man at a Pikesville apartment complex was shot in the head about 3 p.m. Monday, an incident that police said was witnessed by several middle school students as they left a nearby school. The man was taken to Northwest Hospital Center and was in grave condition, according to police. The shooting happened in the Owings Chase Apartments in the 4600 block of Old Court Road, police said. Police spokeswoman Sgt. Vickie Warehime said the suspect was involved in some kind of conflict before the shooting.

Baltimore firefighters pulled a body from the water near Fells Point yesterday afternoon, but authorities said it was too soon to determine whether foul play was involved. It was the third time in two weeks that a body had been retrieved from the Inner Harbor. Yesterday, fire and police officials responded to a call of a body floating near the 1400 block of Thames St. about 12:30 p.m. and retrieved it a short time later, said Fire Chief Kevin Cartwright. The body, which appeared to be that of a Hispanic male age 20 to 30, seemed to have been in the water for some time, he said.

As the pathologist checked the list of injuries in his autopsy report of a Rodgers Forge toddler, he kept repeating the same phrase: blunt-force trauma. He must have said it 15 times. Zabiullah Ali, who performed the autopsy of Andrew Griffin on Dec. 27, 2007, the day after the child was pronounced dead in a Towson hospital, testified in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday that Andrew showed signs of trauma throughout his body - bruises, lacerations and abrasions, some months old and "too many to count."

Baltimore City homicide detectives and Frederick City police were awaiting the results of an autopsy and toxicology tests to determine the cause of death of a Northeast Baltimore woman whose body was found Sept. 5 in her family's sport utility vehicle, which was parked on a street in the Western Maryland town. The woman's death is being considered suspicious, authorities said. Police said the family of Shneara Boone, 19, who worked at the McDonald's restaurant in the 6300 block of Kenwood Ave. in Rosedale, reported her missing to Baltimore police Aug. 31. Five days later, a Frederick City police officer responding to a report of a foul odor coming from a green SUV parked on a city street saw the woman's body in the vehicle.

A warrant has been issued charging a West Baltimore woman with the death of her newborn son, police said. The woman, Jeanine Alice Blackwell, 34, of the 300 block of S. Monroe St. is serving time at Maryland Correctional Institute for Women at Jessup for a parole violation, police said. City homicide detectives are expected to charge her formally with the newborn's death, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a city police spokeswoman. Monroe said that about 4 p.m. March 8, Blackwell was experiencing pain when she sat on her home toilet and gave birth.

An autopsy is to be performed today on the body of a man found last night in a wooded area near Woodlawn Cemetery in Baltimore County, police said. Shortly after 6 p.m., a passer-by was walking in the first block of Thornhurst Court in the Hilltop Estates community when he saw the body in woods a short distance from the cemetery and called police. A police spokesman said homicide detectives were called to the scene. After a preliminary investigation, the body was taken to the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore, where an autopsy is expected to determine the cause of death and possibly the man's identity through fingerprints.

An autopsy on the body of a man found yesterday morning lying next to railroad tracks near Carroll Park in South Baltimore indicated the man died as a result of being shot, said a city Police Department spokesman Shortly before 9:30 a.m., police responded to the end of the 400 block of S. Stricker St., where they found the body of a man later identified as Robert Long, 36, whose last known address was the 1700 block of DeSoto Road, said Agent Donny Moses,...