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A reader owns a town house condominium. The home has a gas fireplace, which had not been properly vented. As a result, heat from the fireplace melted a pipe in a laundry room above it and "melted the insulation off electrical wires and burned insulation and floor joists." Water from the pipe damaged a bathroom on the floor below. The reader's tale of woe continues. She writes: "I called the condominium association to enlighten them of this potentially tragic situation. I was informed by management that no monies were available for repairs and ... that the president of the association had absconded with all the owners' monthly fees and no one knew where he had gone.

Larry Blank eased off Interstate 70 west of Frederick and into the rest stop where he works as a custodian. It was just before midnight Wednesday. The parking lot was dead - just two other cars. He chose the space next to a blue Chevrolet Caprice. The car, he noticed, had New Jersey tags. Yesterday afternoon, as he stood outside his Hagerstown home surrounded by cameras, the 52-year-old custodian would marvel at how close he came to the two men sleeping inside, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, believed to be responsible for the sniper shootings that have terrorized the Washington, D.C., area.

A 38-year-old Elkridge man was being held on $250,000 bail in the Baltimore County Detention Center on charges, including kidnapping and first-degree assault, in the reported abduction and beating of a girlfriend, authorities said. The woman, 44, told Baltimore County police that she was kidnapped from her home in the north county community of Hydes about 3 p.m. Saturday and forced into the passenger seat of her car. She said her assailant drove her around, smoked crack and beat her with his fists.

Republican Phillip D. Bissett stepped up his campaign for county executive yesterday, criticizing Democratic incumbent Janet S. Owens for using two county police officers to serve as her security detail and to drive her around. Bissett, a former state delegate who is seeking the Republican nomination to run against Owens in the fall, leveled his attack during a briefing on public safety issues. He also sharply criticized Police Chief P. Thomas Shanahan and said he would hire a security preparedness coordinator to set up emergency plans.

A suspended Baltimore priest who served as youth minister at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen pleaded guilty to a Internet pornography charge yesterday, admitting that he received graphic images of children on his computer in the church rectory. Court records released yesterday also showed that authorities moved to arrest the Rev. Thomas A. Rydzewski last year after an eBay seller grew suspicious of Rydzewski's online purchases, which included anatomically correct dolls, photos of altar boys and adult "baby briefs" - men's underwear decorated with dinosaurs, trucks and tractors.

A complex domestic violence case brought against a Howard County police corporal by his estranged wife is budding into a feud between the Police Department and the Carroll County state's attorney's office, which was specially appointed to prosecute the charges. During a heated preliminary hearing Friday, Carroll County prosecutors said the Howard County Police Department was biased in its investigation of Cpl. Michael K. Williams, who is accused of threatening his estranged wife with a gun. The felony assault charge alleges that the corporal pointed a gun at Elizabeth Williams on Oct. 20 and demanded she drop another set of charges she filed against him in September.

After watching the Ravens game at a friend's house, Hector Silva returned to his South Baltimore rowhouse Sunday night to find that someone had broken his basement window. He was scared when he walked through the door, and he was only slightly relieved to recognize the man sitting in his living room as Kenneth Abend. "He told me he needed to hide out for a few days," Silva said yesterday in his Brooklyn home, still shocked that within 24 hours after the encounter police were considering Abend a suspect in the shooting deaths of two Glen Burnie women.

Three separate armed-robbery incidents in the past three days - including one in daylight - have Howard County police searching for four suspects. Early yesterday morning, someone described to police as a polite, clean-cut male between 20 and 30 years old robbed the Kmart at 9200 Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City. Investigators said the armed man entered Kmart's office area about 1:25 a.m. He bound the five employees with duct tape, took an undetermined amount of money and fled, police said.

Arundel Mills developers predicted their 1.3 million-square-foot mega-mall would become the state's biggest tourist attraction when it opened a year ago in time for the Thanksgiving shopping rush. Anne Arundel County public safety officials predicted that the entertainment-shopping complex in Hanover would generate as many emergency calls as an entire town. A year later, it looks as if they were right. County police and firefighters were dispatched to Arundel Mills more than 2,500 times in the past year, as 14 million people flocked to the state's newest and largest shopping mall.