Back Seat

A 31-year-old Brooklyn Park woman who had just cashed a check at a store and was driving away was robbed of nearly $600 Friday afternoon by a man hiding in the back seat of her car, county police said.Barbara Cheryl Keefer of Edgevale Road was driving away from Charlie Ward's in the 4600 block of Fourth St., Brooklyn Park, about 3:35 p.m. when the mugger "popped up in the rear of the seat and demanded her wallet," a police report said.Ms. Keefer gave the man her cigarette case, which contained her money, police said.

A number of downtown city streets will be temporarily closed mid-day Wednesday to accommodate the circus elephant walk from 1st Mariner Arena to Lexington Market. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephants will leave 1st Mariner Arena at 11:45 a.m. and lumber north along Hopkins Plaza, west on Fayette Street and north on Eutaw Street to the Lexington Market parking lot. At 12:30 p.m., the procession will follow the same route back to the arena. In addition to temporary closures, Eutaw Street will be closed to through traffic from Fayette Street to Saratoga Street between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., with detours and parking restrictions in effect.

Q: My 17-year-old son refuses to wear a seat belt when he riding in the back seat of our car. He says because the rear belt doesn't have a shoulder strap, it's more dangerous to wear it than not. Is he right?A: Definitely not! We are sometimes amazed at how myths abouinjuries from seat belts continue to travel the rumor circuit.Unbelted, a rear seat passenger is at substantial risk fosuffering a serious head injury is a a car accident. The body's inertia will carry it forward into the front seat or perhaps to the --board or front window.

SPOILER ALERT: This story reveals features of the plot. Baltimore-born film director Barry Levinson has said his new eco-horror movie, "The Bay," about a Chesapeake Bay turned deadly by environmental abuse, is "80 percent factual. " Bay scientists and one activist who've seen it say the film, which opened Friday, does touch on some very real issues affecting the bay. But they say the artistic license taken with the facts and the gore that makes it a horror movie may overwhelm any back story about what's wrong with the Chesapeake.

WASHINGTON - The lives of up to 2,000 children could be saved each year if parents buckled them up in the back seats of their cars instead of allowing them to ride in the front, road-safety experts said yesterday. The unnecessary fatalities persist despite a 10.7 percent decline in child fatalities from car crashes in the past six years and a 94 percent drop in child deaths related to air bags, said Chuck Hurley, executive director of the Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign, a unit of the National Safety Council.

Five-year-old Max Kushner doesn't even want to ride in the front seat of a car anymore."If you explain to kids, logically, that they're a lot safer buckled in the back, they understand," says his mom, Pam Kushner, a Long Beach, Calif., family physician and a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Kushner is a spokeswoman for the Academy of Family Physicians on the subject of children and auto safety.By now every parent in America should have gotten the message from news reports that air bags, while effective in saving adult lives -- 500 just last year -- can prove lethal to children in the front seat during even a minor accident.

Describing a duel of drug kingpins that created a climate of "kill-or-be-killed," a notorious East Baltimore heroin dealer testified yesterday that he was in a race against time to assassinate the rival allegedly intent on killing him."He was out to assassinate all of us," a gravely voiced Elway Williams said of Anthony Jones, whose suspected drug organization is the focus of a federal murder, racketeering and narcotics trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The hearings have offered a rare firsthand account of life inside Baltimore's drug-ridden killing zones.

County police arrested an Arnold woman and a Severna Park man on drug charges Wednesday morning after finding 13 grams of suspected marijuana in their car, officials said.Eastern District Officer Bryan Culbertson said he saw a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit run a stop sign at Jones Station and Church roads about 12:30 a.m. When he pulled the car over, a man and woman inside tossed clothes over something in the back seat, the officer said.When he asked the woman driver what was on the back seat, she said there was nothing illegal in the car and consented to a search, police said.

Fearing for his life, a Baltimore County cab driver shot and critically wounded a passenger in Randallstown Friday night, county police said yesterday.They said a man in the back seat pointed a handgun at the driver while the cab was in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in the 8500 block of Liberty Road about 11 p.m.The passenger, Craig Rawls, 23, of the 4600 block of Hawksbury Road in Randallstown, was listed in critical condition last night at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore with gunshot wounds in the chest and shoulder.

A Gambrills man was arrested Tuesday morning on a weapons charge after county police reported finding a pen gun in his car, officials said.Officer Lawrence O'Connor saw a Toyota Tercel spinning out of control on Oak Manor Drive near the Route 100 ramp shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday, police said. He stopped the car near the Woodhill Apartments and saw a man in the back seat push something down as if trying to hide it, police said. Officer O'Connor decided to search the car because the area is known for gunfire and drug dealing.

Pikesville High School senior Josh Borris is working this summer, but he won't be paid. Completing a second summer as an intern at Correct Rx Pharmacy Services Inc. in Linthicum Heights, he said, is more valuable than earning money at a traditional summer job. "I want to one day be a pharmacist researcher figuring out how drugs interact with the human body," he said of his summer work at the institutional pharmacy company. "This internship is an experience for the future. " Even as fewer teens seek to work during the summer, some like Borris are pursuing internships or other experiences they hope will give them a leg up on their intended careers.

Well what do you know! The United States of America is a team player in the battle against Moammar Gadhafi. Not the owner, the coach or even the quarterback; just a linebacker. What a great moment for the world to see the "united" nations work for peace and human freedom. And the hopeful idea that the United States becomes a deputy and not the sheriff. The message to the young people of the world must be very inspiring. Mr. Gadhafi and all the old thugs are on the way out. And the kids of the world did it. Now let us old timers step back and give them room.

After three years of nonstop talk about budget doom, county leaders still able to afford the trek to their annual Ocean City conference are keeping such discussions to a minimum — leaving candidates for office to take up the topic. Whoever crafts the next state budget — presumably Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley or his likely opponent in November, Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. — will face a roughly $1.6 billion gap between expected revenues and planned spending.

Immigration reform is the right issue — at the wrong time. It's the right issue because, now that substantial health care reform has been achieved, perhaps this nation's greatest remaining travesty is that more than 10 million people live among us in a shadow world of fear and hardship. The vast majority of illegal immigrants stay out of trouble and work hard to support their families, yet most endure poverty, hostility and constant anxiety about being torn from their loved ones and deported.

At the lectern stood Mike Shanahan , who has a five-year, $35 million contract that gives him final authority over football decisions as head coach and executive vice president of the Washington Redskins. Seated at a nearby table was Bruce Allen , the first general manager Dan Snyder has hired in 11 years of owning the team. And nowhere on the stage was Snyder, who sat next to his wife, Tanya , as a member of the audience in the Redskins Park auditorium in Ashburn, Va. It was the first time he hasn't introduced a new coach, a powerful symbol of how the balance of power has shifted within a proud franchise.

The friendship that bloomed between Ravens coach John Harbaugh and the Minnesota Vikings' Brad Childress was rooted in the meeting rooms and hallways of the Philadelphia Eagles' training facility when both men toiled as assistant coaches for Andy Reid. But that relationship was further enhanced outside the Eagles' building when the duo took part in long-distance runs during lunchtime. "I'd say we've shared a lot of the same kind of ideas about football over the years," Harbaugh recalled.

In a bizarre case that has shocked the city's legal community, a Baltimore attorney has been charged with hiring a hit man to kill her law partner in an apparent effort to cover up the theft of more than $10,000 from the firm, police said.Susan Fila, 42, a malpractice specialist who graduated near the top of her class at the University of Baltimore law school, was rTC arrested Thursday night and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and theft over $300, according to court records.

Police logDavidsonville: Someone smashed a driver's-side window, broke the trunk lock and damaged the back seat of a 1992 Mitsubishi Mirage parked in front of a home in the 2700 block of Spring Lakes Drive and stole stereo equipment worth more than $800. The incident occurred between 3 a.m. and 8: 30 a.m. Monday.Pub Date: 5/22/96

This month, beleaguered General Motors announced that after 83 years, it was finally eliminating its Pontiac division in hopes of averting bankruptcy. This news catapulted me back to another time, when Pontiacs were Kings of the Road. I was also awash in Pontiac nostalgia because the first family car I really remember was a Pontiac. With the outbreak of World War II, automakers ceased production. With the return of peace, Americans were eager to take to the highways once again . The pent-up desire was fueled by cheap gas, big postwar salaries, and a desire to drive the fastest and most stylish models Detroit could provide.

WASHINGTON -When Barack Obama was campaigning for president, he promised to enact legislation to prohibit the states from limiting the right to abortion. Now that Obama is in the White House and solid Democratic majorities are ensconced in Congress, opponents of abortion rights have been bracing for that and other major changes to abortion laws. But there are indications that what those groups dread most and some liberal voters eagerly anticipate as the rewards of victory might not come to pass - at least not yet. Democrats on Capitol Hill say that while they are committed to reversing several Bush administration policies with regard to abortion rights and family planning, they might hold off on pursuing the kind of expansive agenda feared by social conservatives.