Baseball Bat

Anne Arundel County police used tear gas early Thursday to force a man out of the Hanover home of his estranged wife, police said. Mark Edward McMillan had barricaded himself inside the house in the 7100 block of Ohio Ave. and had threatened to burn it down, police said. Howard County police told Anne Arundel County police about 1 a.m. Thursday that a man suspected in a home invasion in Elkridge might be on his way to the home of his estranged wife and might be armed. When officers checked on her, the 51-year-old woman was fine and McMillan was nowhere in sight, according to police spokesman Justin Mulcahy.

The Harford County Sheriff's Department has charged an 18-year-old Edgewood man with attempted murder, assault, robbery and other charges in connection with a shooting Wednesday in the Harford Commons neighborhood. Police said Shawn Scott Stansbury Jr. threatened the residents of a home in the 2000 block of Starr St. shortly before midnight. While pointing a handgun at them, he demanded valuables, police said. Thomas Joseph Sweiger, 20, of Bel Air struck Stansbury in the head with a baseball bat. Stansbury fired the gun, hitting Sweiger in the leg and forehead.

Bel Air resident shot twice; man arrested The Harford County Sheriff's Department has charged an 18-year-old Edgewood man with attempted murder, assault, robbery and other charges in connection with a shooting Wednesday in the Harford Commons neighborhood. Police said Shawn Scott Stansbury Jr. threatened the residents of a home in the 2000 block of Starr St. shortly before midnight. While pointing a handgun at them, he demanded valuables, police said. Thomas Joseph Sweiger, 20, of Bel Air struck Stansbury in the head with a baseball bat. Stansbury fired the gun, hitting Sweiger in the leg and forehead.

A Glen Burnie teen was found responsible yesterday in the death of a 49-year-old man who died after being struck on the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Christian J. Schellenschlager Jr., 16, was found the juvenile court's equivalent of guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He avoided a similar finding on more serious charges, including second-degree murder, in the death of Brian Michael Myers in April. Prosecutors had attempted to have him tried as an adult. The teenager did not admit responsibility, but he agreed to a statement of facts read yesterday morning by prosecutors in the Anne Arundel County courtroom of Circuit Judge J. Michael Wachs.

A 15-year-old Glen Burnie boy has been accused of killing a man who died more than two weeks after being struck in the head with a baseball bat during an argument. Christian J. Schellenschlager Jr., a sophomore at Glen Burnie High School, was ordered held without bond yesterday after being arrested Friday and charged as an adult with first-degree murder, first-degree assault and reckless endangerment. Police said he was among a group of youths who got into an argument with Brian Michael Myers, 49, on April 29. During the argument, police said Schellenschlager left the area and retrieved a baseball bat. Myers was struck in the head from behind with an aluminum Louisville Slugger.

The judge described Robert Brazell Jr.'s death as a "totally senseless tragedy." Prosecutor Danielle Duclaux, in fact, couldn't even give the judge a reason for the fight that led to the teenager's killing. "I don't really understand why I'm standing here," Duclaux said, calling Brazell's death foolish and tragic. "There doesn't seem to be any good reason why this happened." Yesterday, Kevin Francis Klink, the Howard County teenager who had pleaded guilty to killing Brazell by hitting him on the head with a baseball bat last year, was sentenced to serve 13 years in prison by Howard County Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman.

BEIJING -- Diplomacy, apparently, has no dress code. Cal Ripken Jr., Hall of Fame baseball player turned American emissary, spent the first half of his first full day as a Department of State special envoy yesterday dressed in a sharp business suit. He shook hands, met with the American Chamber of Commerce, Olympic baseball organizers and officials with the Chinese Baseball Association. By afternoon, though, Ripken was wearing athletic gear when he introduced himself to 150 Chinese children at Xidan Elementary School in the city's fledging financial district.

If you couldn't head down to the islands for your spring break, you still could have caught a tropical breeze just by swinging by M&T Bank Stadium. That's where TurnAround Inc. - which helps victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse - was throwing its annual fundraiser, and this year's theme was "Steppin' Out to the Tropics." As they entered the North Club Lounge, guests were greeted by volunteers in Hawaiian shirts, sarongs and leis. The area was decked out in sunny tropical colors, with light sculptures of pink flamingos and tropical fish, and branches of orchids springing from coconut vases.

Howard County police are investigating an assault that sent three teenagers to Maryland Shock Trauma Center yesterday after they were struck in the head with baseball bats. Two 17-year-old Columbia residents and a 18-year-old Ellicott City resident were involved in a fight about 1 a.m. yesterday on the 9400 block of Old Frederick Road, Howard County police said. Several people involved in the fight were armed with bats. The 18-year-old was taken to the hospital by helicopter and was in critical condition after suffering a severe head injury, police said.

Thousands of young people head to Capitol Hill each year hoping to launch their careers, and when Michael Scanlon arrived in the mid-1990s, he was fairly typical: talented, ambitious, not particularly ideological but drawn to power. But Mr. Scanlon, now 35, apparently was missing something: a moral compass that might have helped him better navigate an environment that fostered personal corruption. This boyishly handsome and charming flim-flam man from Kensington, Md., is now at the center of an epic scandal - complete with mobsters, murder, defrauded millions, and women scorned.