Crime Scene

An off-duty Baltimore police officer gave himself up late Tuesday after barricading himself in a home with a toddler in a six-hour standoff that began when he fatally shot a woman, authorities said. Officer James Smith, a 20-year veteran and member of the motorcycle unit, was taken into custody before 9:30 p.m. and was charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday morning, among other charges, according to court records. Police had evacuated residents in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood from their homes during the incident.

An off-duty Baltimore police officer gave himself up late Tuesday after barricading himself in a home with a toddler in a six-hour standoff that began when he fatally shot a woman, authorities said. Officer James Smith, a 20-year veteran and member of the motorcycle unit, was taken into custody before 9:30 p.m. and was charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday morning, among other charges, according to court records. Police had evacuated residents in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood from their homes during the incident.

I'm a seventeen year old student who attends Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. I was intrigued by the article "Two injured near memorial to 6-year-old child who was killed by gunfire in 1991" (May 14). The memorial is a transfer point on the bus I catch to and from school every day and had just been redecorated less than two weeks ago. This is an awful tragedy because the memorial symbolizes the life of a young girl named Tiffany Smith who was killed by a stray bullet. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had just made the memorial a landmark in Baltimore, and already another crime has overshadowed the good in it. The worst part about the story is most people have lost the main issue at hand, which is Tiffany Smith's memorial being another crime scene.

A man who was shot in the abdomen late Sunday night is expected to recover, Baltimore Police said. Officers were called to the 400 block of Bonsal Street in Bayview for a reported shooting at 11:12 p.m. Minutes later, a man walked into nearby Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. A crime scene was located a few blocks away in the rear northside alley of the 5900 block of Eastern Avenue, police said.

A reporting system set up to provide Maryland lawmakers with data on crime scene DNA testing by state and local law enforcement agencies has major flaws, a state auditor's review has found. The report by the state Office of Legislative Audits said that a "lack of clear guidance" in the legislation, in implementing regulations and in the report forms provided to police, led to "inconsistencies" in the reporting that have rendered any conclusions drawn from the numbers "unreliable.

Youngsters opened a classroom door at Crofton Elementary School and entered what appeared to be a crime scene: a masking-tape outline of a body, a hammer, a tennis ball covered with dog hair and a "Caution: Do Not Cross" sign. They were walking in on a mock incident as part of their weeklong Crime Scene and Chemistry Camp, which introduces rising first- through fifth-graders to the ways that real-life detectives use science to solve crimes. The camp, held this week, draws students who have interest in mysteries yet are mostly unfamiliar with detective skills.

The Baltimore police crime lab technician put on white latex gloves and carefully opened a yellow envelope, letting a box-cutter fall into his hand. Testifying at a murder trial Friday, he held up it up and paraded it in front of the jury. “You can see there's still some blood on the blade,” the technician, Franklin Saunders, said as he walked jurors through a gruesome crime scene, showing them evidence and photographs of a bloody room and a body of a teenager crumpled in the fetal position in his bedroom closet.

City homicide detectives were investigating a stabbing across from Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore. Police were called to the scene, at the intersection of West Lexington and North Paca streets, at about 4:50 p.m. Friday. Crime scene tape blocked off a stretch of sidewalk in front of the Lexaco appliance store, across from one of the main entrances to the market. Blood could be seen on the sidewalk just outside the front door, while detectives stood over items marked for evidence inside the store.

Dana Kollmann writes about the hot summer day she went to a squalid rowhouse to collect evidence of a drug overdose. She describes how she photographed a man dead in the bathroom, a syringe still in his arm. In another room of the rowhouse, she recalls, the dead man's brother sat at the kitchen table -- and gnawed at a drumstick and played along with a TV game show. It was Wheel of Fortune and, according to Kollmann, the brother called out an answer: "Fun in the sun." "You just don't see this stuff on CSI," said Kollmann, a former real-life crime scene investigator for the Baltimore County police and author of a new book that chronicles her adventures.

Loyd Ray Barnes Jr., a forensic examiner who founded Crime Scene Clean-Up Inc., died of respiratory failure Nov. 18 at City Hospital in Martinsburg, W.Va. He was 48 and had lived in Forest Hill. Born in Baltimore and known as Ray, he was raised in Parkville. He graduated from Parkville Senior High School in 1980 and then joined the Army. He became a forensic investigator for the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office in downtown Baltimore and later in a similar capacity in Harford County.

We are all Boston. It's something we said on Monday, when we were at a loss for words to describe our shared sorrow and horror at the marathon bombings, when we knew no other way to express our solidarity with a city reeling from terrible loss. Four days later, it is something we said as we cheered along with all those gathered on a quiet street in Watertown as police captured the second suspect in the bombings alive, put him in a squad car and drove away. We say it now out of pride for a city that responded to tragedy in a way we all hope we would and brought a terrifying week to a close with a professionalism and dignity that represents the best in us all. We now know just enough details about the two men believed to be responsible for the bombings to invite speculation about what could have led them to commit such a terrible act. The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a promising amateur boxer who experienced troubles in this country.

Baltimore County prosecutors will not be allowed to use information provided by James D. Laboard's lawyer on the night that the off-duty police officer allegedly killed a Randallstown teenager, a judge ruled Friday. During a criminal motions hearing, Circuit Judge Jan Marshall Alexander ruled that the lawyer's decision to talk to detectives violated attorney-client confidentiality. Prosecutors said the ruling would have little effect on the case. Laboard, a Baltimore County police officer, is charged with two counts of manslaughter in the death of 17-year-old Christopher Brown.

Baltimore Police found a man dead of an apparent homicide on Friday morning in an industrial, half-vacant section of the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood. The man was found at 6:07 a.m. in a field behind a string of abandoned railroad cars next to some tracks just off the 600 block of S. Fulton Ave. Bits of crime scene tape remained attached to a rusted railroad car that had marked off the crime scene, where, at noon, blood could be seen still pooled on the ground. No description of the victim's age, injuries or manner of death was available.

University of Maryland, Eastern Shore officials on Monday said state police are investigating assertions that campus officers took an extended period of time to respond to the fatal stabbing of a student during homecoming weekend. Edmond A. St. Clair, 21, of Severn was stabbed on the Princess Anne campus Saturday night. St. Clair's family has said that it took too long for police to help him and that the assailants lingered at the scene after the stabbing. Campus spokesman Bill Robinson said state police are constructing a timeline.

Dexter and the Dark Passenger. They've been together for as long as we've known our charming serial killer, but in swoops Hannah, a girl he barely knows, and out goes the thinking that has balanced his entire life. It all started when the arsonist struck again; fifth time's the charm right? Dexter gets to thinking that the arson inspector looks a little fishier than he has a right to be. While he doesn't seem to share Dexter's cold eyes, he must have a strong stomach to smell the burnt bodies.

A man was shot in the 1000 block of Greenmount Avenue in the Johnston Square neighborhood of East Baltimore Monday night, according to Baltimore police - adding another crime scene to a north-south corridor already left bloodied in recent days. Police responded to the scene about 10:15 and found the man shot, police said. Further details were not immediately available. On Nov. 20, 16-year-old Daniel Pearson was shot and killed and two men were shot and wounded in a triple shooting to the north, in the 2700 block of Greenmount.

Jurors wept yesterday, some uncontrollably, as prosecutors played for them horrifying video footage of the apartment where three children were found last year with their necks cut so deeply that all were nearly decapitated. Coming after days of mostly monotonous testimony in the Baltimore trial of two Mexican immigrants charged with the killings, the crime scene video so deeply affected jurors that court ended early. The jurors left quickly, many still in tears, and several hugged each other outside the downtown courthouse.

Maybe Carrie's family is right about this job being too stressful. Beyond the psychological challenges of subterfuge and shifting loyalties, this week's episode of "Homeland" zeroes in on the broader, more tangible threat of violence. Episode 6 of the show's second season yielded the first casualties of the year, as an investigation into Abu Nazir's U.S. network leaves a team of CIA agents with their backs to the wall in a shocking, bloody scene. This week's action also offered some payoff for awkward story lines and slow-moving action in some of the show's sub-plots and provided some new complexity in the relationship between Carrie and Brody.

A 15-year-old boy was shot in the leg about 7:12 p.m. Monday in or near a housing courtyard not far from Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore, extending a string of violence that saw eight people shot in the city over the weekend. Many recent shootings in the city have involved teenagers. The boy is expected to recover from his injuries, police said. They had no motives in the shooting late Monday. At the scene in the 700 block of Wharton Court, which is lined by two-story homes, two separate areas were blocked off with police tape.