Chase

A month before he joined the Orioles as the organization's new executive director of international recruiting, curiosity took Fred Ferreira to the Mexican coastal city of Mazatlan. With more than 40 years of experience scouring for international talent, Ferreira has uncovered many diamonds in the rough throughout Latin America. And his most recent such discovery emerged last November in the Mexican Pacific League, a world away from the intimidating cathedrals of the American League East like Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park.

City police chasing a suspected car thief on foot forced a lock-down at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School in the city's northwest neighborhood for less than an hour Monday morning. The city dispatch notified area schools of the incident, which began about 8:10 a.m. Police chased the suspect, who abandoned the stolen car and ran across a field at the school in the 5200 hundred block of Roland Avenue. Staff heard police calling "Stop" and saw the suspect continue running, officials said.

A man and woman were arrested Thursday night after fleeing a Laurel motel room that police were about to raid as part of a drug investigation and leading officers on a pursuit through multiple jurisdictions, according to Howard County Police. Police had arrived about 5 p.m. at the Turf Motel in the 9800 block of Washington Boulevard to serve a search and seizure warrant at one of the motel's rooms when they saw the pair drive off in a 2003 Ford Taurus, police said. Police pursued the vehicle and attempted to make a traffic stop, but the man driving the Taurus refused to stop, police said.

The Grand Prix of Baltimore was IndyCar points leader Will Power's chance to wrap up his first title on a street course, the kind of race track that is his forte. He couldn't do it. Now he has to go to Fontana, Calif., to a 500-mile race on an oval. The mere thought of it is enough to make Michael Andretti, who owns the car driven by Power's main foe, Ryan Hunter-Reay, just a little bit cocky. "We're going to win this thing," Andretti said as soon as Sunday's Grand Prix was over and his driver, Hunter-Reay, had won the Baltimore race and closed within 17 points of Power.

The first thing Tim Johnson remembers hearing from the son who had gone unexpectedly airborne that dreary August afternoon seven years ago in southern Canada, a 12-year-old bucked from his 250cc motorcycle like a clueless bull rider, was that he could not feel his legs. Michael Johnson could not feel his legs, he later learned, because there was no way of feeling them. At the moment his chest, hurtling toward a wooden fence at almost 80 mph, met the handlebars of a dirt bike that refused to go any farther, the paraplegia was immediate.

Around the Baltimore metropolitan area, something is happening. It hasn't happened in many years - almost a generation, in fact. It's the end of August, the Orioles are in a pennant race, and there's a sense of possibility in the air. People are turning to MASN to see if the Orioles are staging yet another dramatic, late-inning comeback. They're flipping on WBAL to hear Joe Angel proclaim - as he has already done more times this season than all of last year - that "The Orioles are in the win column!"

A.J. Foyt Racing announced this morning it is joining with Starting Grid, an organization founded to help diversity motorsports, and American Honda to field a car for Chase Austin, 22, who has long been considered a solid prospect in both open wheel and stock car circles, in next May's Indianapolis 500. At the news conference, Austin couldn't keep the smile from his face. "There's not too many people who get this opportunity," Austin said. "Just to say, 'I'm driving for A.J. Foyt,' not to mention too many who can say, 'I'm going to be driving in the Indy 500.' I am so excited.

Ryan Hunter-Reay didn't know what to think or feel after he won Honda Indy Toronto on July 8. It was his third consecutive victory and moved him into the lead of the IZOD IndyCar Series points chase. Will Power, an Australian driver who won the Baltimore Grand Prix last year and finished runner-up in the points standings in 2011, also won three straight races this season. But Hunter-Reay is the first American in six years to achieve that feat, and he has a chance to become the first U.S. champion of the series since Sam Hornish Jr. in 2006.

One year after announcing plans to move its headquarters to the former Monumental Life Building at Charles and Chase streets, Chase-Brexton Health Services is about to begin a $25 million renovation to prepare the property for its new use. Chase Brexton cleared a key hurdle last month when Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation approved its renovation plans, which call for interior spaces to be substantially reconstructed, exterior...

A 31-year-old man with a violent criminal past has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for shooting a city police officer in Baltimore's downtown, which sparked a running gun battle with tactical officers who pursued the gunman up North Calvert Street. Prosecutors said Franklin J. Gross Sr., whose last known address was on Liberty Heights Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, pleaded guilty in Circuit Court to attempted first-degree murder and using a handgun in a crime of violence. The officer he shot, Todd A. Strohman, had been on the force just one year when he was wounded in the shoulder while patrolling North Calvert and East Baltimore streets in the early morning hours of Nov. 27, 2010.