Campus Police

Digest Baltimore City: Clifton Park Officer shot in hand; gunman escapes A Baltimore police officer was shot in the left hand by a gunman Saturday night after stopping to investigate an apparent drug transaction in an alley near Clifton Park, police said. Northeastern District Officer Robert Hayes was driving a cruiser in the 1700 block of Montpelier St. about 9:30 p.m. when he spotted suspicious activity between two men in the alley, said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman. When Hayes stepped from his car and approached the pair, one fled and the other pulled out a handgun, police said.

A 19-year-old man was stabbed last night in the Coppin State University gymnasium during an argument with a boy about who could play in a basketball game, a campus spokeswoman and police said. The argument occurred about 8:45 p.m. after the victim's team had lost a basketball game. When the boy's team walked onto the court to play the next game, the victim refused to leave, authorities said. "That's when the suspect pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the side," said spokeswoman Ursula Battle.

A 21-year-old Towson University student was raped in her off-campus apartment by an intruder, Baltimore County police said yesterday. The woman was sleeping in the bedroom of her apartment in the Fairways at Towson complex when a man broke in just after 5 a.m. Tuesday, police said. The man assaulted and raped her, police said. She was treated at a nearby hospital and released, said Officer Shawn Vinson, a county police spokesman. Police were not disclosing details of how the man broke into the apartment in the 1300 block of Airlie Way, and they did not release a description of the assailant.

More than 70 high school students attending a conference at the University of Maryland, College Park were treated at local hospitals last night for apparent food poisoning, authorities said. The students were attending the National Student Leadership Conference, a university spokeswoman said. Campus police said all had been staying at the school's LaPlata dormitory and some had eaten at a nearby campus dining hall. None of the students had been admitted to the hospital and all were expected to be released, according to spokeswomen from Doctors Community Hospital of Prince George's County in Lanham and Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park.

Jessica Soto Perez was working toward a doctorate in biochemical engineering, hoping, her fellow students said, to one day return to her native Puerto Rico to teach. Yesterday, her classmates and professors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, mourned the loss of a friend who, as one put it, "radiated her love for learning." Perez, a 26-year-old graduate student at UMBC, was fatally shot Tuesday night in the parking lot of the school's Catonsville campus by her husband, who then shot himself, witnesses told Baltimore County police.

University of Maryland and College Park officials were weighing yesterday how to respond to another act of violence at an off-campus party, the nonfatal stabbing of a 22-year-old student Saturday morning. Prince George's County police said that Nicholas Salem was hit with a bottle and stabbed in the back with an unknown object in a brawl between revelers from two parties at College Park Towers, an apartment building in the 4300 block of Knox Road. No arrests have been made in the stabbing.

Urban emergency rooms stand at the intersection of violence and healing, but sometimes the violence doesn't end when patients cross the hospital's threshold. Because of the troubles people bring with them to the ER, emergency departments are "typically the most volatile area, where the most problems happen in any health care institution," said Carl H. Mogavero, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety. Quarreling, anger, fear, grief, drugs, alcohol, long waits and late hours can contribute to the eruption of violence in the ER, hospital security officials said.

Towson University police have issued campus-wide safety warnings after two female students were assaulted. Capt. Robert Novak said police e-mailed warnings and posted fliers last week reminding students to lock their doors and not to let unescorted guests into dormitories. Students also are being reminded that the university offers an escort service so that they don't have to walk alone. The two assaults were reported last week and are being investigated by Baltimore County and university police.

A university police officer shot and wounded two women who were fighting early yesterday inside the emergency room of University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore campus police reported. The gunfire ended a dispute that apparently began at the Paradox nightclub in the 1300 block of Russell St., police said. About 3:30 a.m., a woman involved in a scuffle there arrived at the emergency room seeking treatment for a stomach injury. The patient, whose name was not released, was in the waiting room when four women barged in and attacked her, resuming their earlier fight, said Col. Cleveland Barnes of the campus police.