Crime

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 244 LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 222 homicides as of Oct. 24, 2006. ONLINE: Details on this year's city homicides are at baltimoresun.com/homicidemap

Intruder gets 10 years; his motive is in doubt An out-of-work carpenter was handed a 10-year prison term yesterday for forcing his way into the Odenton townhouse of a woman he had followed home and attacking her, but whether the crime was an attempted robbery or an attempted rape remained in dispute. The victim "was not in danger of any sexual assault," James E. Darnell, 28, of Jessup told Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck before he was sentenced. His lawyer said Darnell's crime was an attempted robbery by a man in financial crisis.

Sipping bottles of Budweisers around the bar, the patrons at Howard's Pub on Holabird Avenue are willing to share the jokes they've heard about the community they call home. Forget Dundalk, Hon. Don't you know it's Dumb-dalk ? What do you call a pretty girl in Dundalk? Lost. The quips draw groans from regulars, who poke fun at themselves because everyone else does. They know how they're viewed: Dundalk — home of the uneducated, the rude, the crass, yes, the rednecks of Baltimore.

Concern over crime against Latinos, already simmering in Baltimore as a result of several attacks in recent weeks, has reached new heights after the fatal beating over the weekend of a 51-year-old man from Honduras. Martin Reyes — whose killing early Saturday was attributed by police to a mentally troubled man who said he hated "Mexicans" — was the fifth Latino shooting or homicide victim in the area in less than two months, officials said. All the victims were Honduran, according to residents, and one was Reyes' nephew, Juan de Dios Hernandez, 27, who was shot in the forehead July 24. "We're afraid that they're trying to finish off the Hispanics," said Anibal Rodriguez, 30, a Honduran laborer who moved to Baltimore five years ago and who was sitting Monday morning on steps of a house across Kenwood Avenue from where Reyes died.

Legislators who advocate projected classes are dim-witted. There is no need for any protected class whether it is for a racial, sexual orientation, religion or transgender class. A crime committed against anyone whether they are a "protected class" or not is a crime and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Discrimination against anyone whether they are a protected class or not is ignorant, and only through public awareness, time, education and enlightenment will you overcome such ignorance.

Can someone explain to me why the beating of a white man outside Courthouse East by a group of black men is not a hate crime? ("Bealefeld: Downtown beating caught on tape not a hate crime," April 10.) If the victim was black and beaten at the hands of a gang of whites, Al Sharpton would be on Pratt Street within hours. The double standard is driving a permanent wedge into race relations, and the media only feeds on the story of the poor victimized African-American. We still don't know the facts in the Trayvon Martin case, but we should never let the facts get in the way of a good protest.

David Rosen walked out of his house on Strathmore Avenue, on his way to synagogue with his children Saturday morning, and came face-to-face with a swastika spray-painted in black on a white Aerostar van parked across the street. Neighborhood children had gathered around his neighbor's vehicle and were staring at the offensive symbols, which included a crude drawing of male genitals and an expletive. "This is a tranquil block, and it was a tranquil day," said Rosen, referring to last week's Sabbath, the day on which four other Jewish families awoke to find similar graffiti painted on their white or gray vans in Northwest Baltimore.

After Tamar Pair's son turned two, she decided to leave Baltimore City, seeking quieter, safer streets. "I wanted to give him options," Pair said of the decision to move to the suburbs. "I didn't want him where there was liquor stores on the corner," she said. But, Pair said, "It doesn't seem like it made a difference. " In October, her son, 16-year-old Derrick Wingate, was gunned down in front of their Edgewood home. The shooting was the second homicide in Edgewood this year and the sixth shooting in a twomile radius that Sheriff L. Jesse Bane said has been "a killing zone.