Court Documents

A teacher at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson was charged yesterday with child abuse after police said he had sex with a 17-year-old girl who was baby-sitting for him. Douglas Brandt Byerly of the 1200 block of Overbrook Road in Towson was placed on administrative leave with pay by the school system, said Baltimore County schools spokesman Charles Herndon. According to court documents, Byerly, who is 36 and teaches music at the school, asked a Carver student to baby-sit for him at his home early in March.

A Baltimore teenager who reported his mother missing last week and then gave interviews on television about her disappearance was charged yesterday with killing her, police said. Detectives said Ross Telp, 18, argued with his mother, Margo Baker, 52, after he scratched the new rims on the tires of her car. They said Baker was stabbed several times, and her body, wrapped in a plastic sheet, was driven from their house and dumped in Leakin Park. Telp, who lived with his mother in the 4300 block of Park Heights Ave., was charged with first-degree murder, police said.

A star lacrosse player who helped lead the Johns Hopkins University to the national tournament last year has been charged with raping a student early Saturday at her off-campus apartment.Brian Joseph Carcaterra, 21, a senior majoring in political science and an All-America lacrosse player, was arrested Monday night by police and charged with second-degree rape and second-degree assault. He was being held last night at the city detention center in lieu of $25,000 bail.The woman told police she believes she was drugged, and investigators said they found an unknown sediment in the bottom of a glass partially filled with white wine that the woman said she had been drinking from.

A Manchester man, who was arrested Thursday by state police on charges of wiretapping the telephone of his estranged wife, remains under suspicion in an alleged plot to harm her boyfriend, according to court documents.William B. Herb, 42, waived a bail review in District Court on Friday and is being held in lieu of $20,000 at the Carroll County Detention Center in Westminster, court records show.Herb, who lives in the 2900 block of Warehime Road, was released in October from a federal prison in Cumberland, where he was serving time for embezzling $275,000 from a Pikesville bank between 1993 and 1996.

A 4-year-old girl clung to life yesterday after she was brutally beaten and raped in a Northeast Baltimore apartment, police said. Her 15-year-old cousin, who had been baby-sitting her, has been charged. Court documents say the teen, Ronald Hinton, had called 911 to report that the toddler had been bouncing on a bed and fell. Police found her face-down and unconscious on the floor, bleeding from the mouth and nose. Investigators said they later determined that the girl had been sexually assaulted, beaten with a belt and bitten three times Wednesday afternoon.

Kyle Hogan's nightmare began in 2004 amid a child custody dispute with his estranged wife, when she took their daughter to her native Philippines and told him they weren't coming back, he said. For the next eight years, Hogan, 43, of Hanover, doggedly sought to reunite with his daughter, seeking help from police and through the Anne Arundel County courts; at one point this year, his wife was charged with abduction, court records show. Just last month, with the assistance of the Maryland State Police and other police agencies, he and his daughter, now 12, settled into a new life together in Anne Arundel County.

The city fraud trial of the former finance director of the Baltimore Museum of Industry was delayed yesterday because the man faces new charges of fraud in Montgomery County. Samuel T. Mercer, charged with stealing $324,000 in museum donations, was arrested on charges that he fraudulently cashed about $31,000 in checks from his new employer's bank account. The Baltimore trial is now scheduled for Dec. 9. Mercer was arrested Sunday in Montgomery County and remained in jail there yesterday awaiting a bail review, which is the reason the Baltimore case was postponed.

A 23 r d suspect has been charged in an indictment against the Maryland-based prison gang Dead Man Inc., according to documents recently unsealed in federal court. Kevin Bales, whose age and address are not listed in court documents, was arrested and charged in a recent superseding indictment with participating in a racketeering conspiracy including murder for hire, extortion and drug dealing. Authorities say Dead Man Inc. is an offshoot of the Black Guerilla Family gang that was formed for white inmates in Maryland prisons, and later spread into the streets and other states.

Nearly a week after Columbia's only drive-by shooting in recent memory, a third suspect - identified by another suspect as the shooter - turned himself in at Howard County's Southern District police station yesterday afternoon, county police said. Derek Travell Powell, 21, of the 11600 block of South Laurel Drive in Laurel was charged with 12 counts, including first-degree attempted murder, in connection with the shootings May 14 in Columbia's Wilde Lake village, police said. One of the three Columbia teen-agers wounded by gunfire underwent surgery yesterday to graft skin over a bullet hole in his left calf, his mother said.

Baltimore County police have charged a Dundalk man with molesting an 8-year-old boy in July, five months after he completed a prison sentence for sexually assaulting two girls in 1996. Robert Keith Gonzales, 29, was arrested Tuesday and charged with second- and third-degree sex offense, perverted practice, sodomy and child abuse. Gonzales, of the 3700 block of North Point Road, was denied bail. Gonzales is accused of molesting the boy, who lived nearby, on July 25 after persuading one of the boy's relatives to let the child stay overnight with him, police said.