Court Documents

The six suspects arrested in a federal sting in Hampden on Thursday planned to kill a co-conspirator in a robbery who was actually an undercover ATF agent, according to court documents. Unbeknownst to the suspects, the robbery plot was a ruse - part of a series of Baltimore operations set up by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in recent months. For the second time, gunfire erupted in a public place as authorities moved in for the arrest, this time in the 3300 block of Clipper Mill Rd. Charged in the case are Tracey TheraldineÖ Betters, 20; Blake Aristotle Betters, 23; Brandon Harris, 20; John McLaurin, 22; Aaron Walker, 23; and 18-year-old IsiahÖ Benjamin.

A Hunt Valley attorney who admitted to having his employees sign his name to foreclosure documents was found by a Baltimore County judge to have violated three of Maryland's rules of professional conduct for lawyers, according to court records. Thomas P. Dore engaged in behavior that was "prejudicial to the administration of justice" by "routinely and repeatedly" filing "with the courts affidavits purportedly signed by him and attested to by notaries" he employed, according to court documents.

The fight began as a routine brawl during "teen night" at Hammerjacks nightclub in downtown Baltimore and ended days later with an 18-year-old fatally shot inside his car near Lake Clifton-Eastern High School, prosecutors say. But minutes before Reginald Gray was killed in February, court documents say, he used his cell phone to call his girlfriend -- a call that helped police arrest four suspects. He told her that if anything happened to him, it was the teenagers whom he and his friends had beat up at Hammerjacks who did it. James Edward Robinson Jr., 18, Aaron Shawn Bell, 18, Derrick Davis, 17, and Xavier Lewis, 18, pleaded not guilty yesterday to first-degree murder and numerous assault and weapons charges related to Gray's killing.

Sex with minor nets probation A Westminster mother of three received five years' probation after being convicted of having sex with one minor and giving alcohol to two other minors, according to court documents and the Carroll County state's attorney's office. Melissa Lynn Kozimor, 27, pleaded guilty in February to having sex with a 14-year-old runaway boy, and to providing two girls -- one 13 and one 14 -- with alcohol, said Amy Ocampo, an assistant state's attorney. Among the conditions of her probation detailed Monday, Kozimor cannot have contact with the victims, must complete a sexual offender treatment program and must register as a sex offender.

Only days after the arrest on sexual-assault charges of a climbing coach at Earth Treks, a second instructor for the company has been charged with performing sex acts with a minor. In both instances, the girls had been learning rock-climbing skills, police in Howard County said. The most recent arrest is that of Daniel Lloyd Montague, a 20-year-old assistant climbing coach at the company's facility in Columbia, who was charged Thursday with four fourth-degree sex offenses. Montague, who lives on Pindell School Road in Fulton, is no longer employed at Earth Treks, which describes itself online as offering "the best rock climbing in the greater Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland region.

Two men have been arrested on child abuse and sexual abuse charges in unrelated cases in Carroll County, according to court documents. Aubrey Howard Meek, 19, of New Windsor was accused of multiple sex offenses against two juveniles in 1998 and last year, court documents show. Meek was released Tuesday from the Carroll County Detention Center in Westminster on $20,000 bail. In the other case, a Washington, D.C., man was accused of sexually abusing two 15-year-old girls after getting them drunk in a field in Finksburg in 1999, according to court documents.

A 21-year-old Glen Burnie man has been charged in the armed robbery of three people in a Columbia home, in which three men bound the victims' hands with plastic ties and covered their heads with pillowcases, according to court documents. After a bail review yesterday in Howard District Court, Keyon Mayfield was ordered held on $100,000 bail at the county detention center, court documents showed. Mayfield was arrested on a warrant and charged by police Friday in the March 25 home invasion and robbery in the 9200 block of Connell Court, court records show.

Two Northwest Baltimore teenagers were charged yesterday with killing a former high school wrestling standout during a botched drug deal in the parking lot of Owings Mills mall. Baltimore County police said Christopher Richard Williams, 15, and Avion Richard Rodriguez, 18, killed Kevin Garmzaban of Eldersburg after a dispute over marijuana Tuesday evening. Williams bragged about the fatal shooting a few hours after it occurred and "laughed" when he told a friend about it, according to court documents.

A 25-year-old Virginia man has been charged with writing pornographic Internet messages to a 14-year-old Carroll County girl is being held at the county detention center. Robert G. Freeman of Sterling, Va. is being held on $25,000 bond. He was arrested Tuesday at an undisclosed Carroll location. Court documents accuse Freeman of communicating since January with the 14-year-old girl on the Internet and "soliciting unlawful sexual conduct and sadomasochistic abuse." He had traveled to Carroll County on Tuesday in a rented car, expecting to meet the girl at her home, court documents said.

Bail was set at $500,000 yesterday for a 22-year-old man charged with shooting a teenager last week outside an apartment complex in Columbia's Harper's Choice village, according to court documents. Sedrick "Rico" C. Legaspi of the 5900 block of Grand Banks Road, in Harper's Choice, is being held at the Howard County Detention Center, court documents show. He is accused of shooting the 17-year-old youth Aug. 31 in an ongoing dispute.