Death

Annapolis man killed; woman turns gun on self An Annapolis woman fatally shot a man she lived with before turning the gun on herself early Tuesday, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. Helen E. Clapsaddle, 43, and Michael J. Missimer, 39, were found dead of gunshot wounds in the master bedroom of their apartment in the 600 block of Admiral Drive minutes after a woman called police and said, "Get us or you will find two dead bodies," police said. Clapsaddle had been having financial problems and domestic issues with Missimer, police said.

The rare film to effectively combine humor and whiz-bang special effects (CGI and big budgets usually don't do funny well), Barry Sonnenfeld's 1997 Men in Black (7 p.m., TBS, repeats 9 p.m.) features the unlikely team of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as members of a super-secret government organization charged with keeping track of all the aliens among us. And by aliens, we mean real aliens, extraterrestrial beings with multiple heads, grotesque bodies (at least by our standards; I'm sure they're regarded as quite handsome on their home planets)

I would like to keep the Christopher Clarke story alive for another day, and this time with the photographs from his funeral. The deaths of young men in Baltimore come and go like flashes of intermittent gunfire on some dark, distant battlefront. But we should pay attention to this one. We should not let it go. We should not shake our heads and quickly turn the page. We should talk to the boy's mother. We should look at the photographs. We should be outraged by the senseless death of Christopher Clarke on Tuesday, March 13 -- at least as outraged as many were over the arrest, the same day, of a 7-year-old for riding a dirt bike.

Woman, 18, charged in death of son, 2 ROCKVILLE -- The mother of a 2-year-old boy who was killed last week has been arrested in the child's death. Montgomery County police say Ruth Sendejas, 18, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of her son, Giovanni. Investigators believe the toddler was asphyxiated. Police say he was unresponsive when officers went to his home in the 3600 block of Bel Pre Road on Nov. 27. He died that day at a hospital. Officers went to the home after someone called 911, then hung up. Call takers couldn't reach anyone after that.

A Rosedale man fatally shot in front of his home in July had been ordered killed to silence his testimony in a Baltimore murder trial, police said yesterday. Carl Stanley Lackl, 38, was the target of a plot launched by jailed murder suspect Patrick Albert Byers, 22, according to Baltimore County police. Lackl was killed eight days before he was to testify as a key witness in Byers' trial. Police accused Byers of sending a text message to an associate's BlackBerry giving Lackl's name and address and offering $1,000 for his death.

A gunman grabbed Joseph Ensey as he was going to a friend's apartment in Northeast Baltimore and put a gun to his head. "Give me all the money you have or I'll blow your head off," Ensey quoted the robber as saying. The two men struggled, and the attacker prevailed, firing from his .22-caliber handgun, hitting the former cross country and track star at North Harford High School twice in the back. One of the bullets nicked Ensey's spine and left him paralyzed. He was 30 years old. That was three days after Christmas 1991.

Carol Roddy will not get a Mother's Day card from her youngest son today. There won't be any flowers from him. And there won't be a Mother's Day dinner with him. Navy Petty Officer David Roddy, who specialized in defusing explosives, died in Iraq last fall. This is her first Mother's Day without him. "I was dreading Mother's Day," she said. Since her son's death, Roddy has been on a mission to revive the Maryland chapter of the American Gold Star Mothers - a support group created in 1928 by grieving mothers who lost their children in World War I. The group is a nonpolitical, nonprofit organization that seeks to "further all patriotic work," according to its charter.

In the prints and drawings of Kathe Kollwitz, beleaguered workers revolt, anguished mothers lament, hungry children with hollow eyes reach out for food and death comes as a skeletal, caped figure. Fans of the German artist and social activist, who lived from 1867 to 1945, say there is sadness, but also beauty and power in her black-and-white compositions. "You don't have to know anything about art to be moved by [Kollwitz's work]," said James Adkins, Howard Community College's director of visual arts.

ROCKVILLE -- Garrett Eldred Wilson had a reputation of hurting only himself in a bungled life of crime: a bank robbery that ended with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a congressional embezzlement scheme in which he faked a pistol-whipping.But prosecutors in Montgomery and Prince George's counties believe greed pushed him beyond physical pain to do the unthinkable -- smother his two infant children for insurance payoffs worth $190,000.Wilson goes on trial todayin Montgomery County, charged with first-degree murder in the 1987 death of 5-month-old Garrett Michael Wilson.

CARBON monoxide deaths are considered freakish because they don't occur as often as such misfortunes as fatal fires or car crashes. Nonetheless, hundreds of people die each year when the colorless, odorless gas, emitted by autos or faulty heating systems, prevents their blood from carrying oxygen.A sad reminder of the hazard came Monday when 20-year-old Bryn E. Parry, of Alexandria, Va., died while asleep in the home of a friend in Annapolis' Eastport section. The friend's mother accidentally left her automobile running in the attached garage, beside the room where Ms. Parry slept.

The Evening Sun reported that 5,160 Marylanders died in the 1918 flu epidemic, but it seems the count was off by one. A news story of a prominent Baltimore physician's death was wrong. He and his family have been correcting this falsehood for 91 years. Years ago, I became fascinated by Baltimore's experience with the Spanish flu epidemic. As a reporter, I also knew that its severity was played down because of World War I press censorship. Any time that 300 persons perish in one day from a single cause sounds like major news to me. In October 1918, news of the flu was pretty much confined to one report a day in all the editions The Sun printed.

The owner of a truck believed to be involved in the hit-and-run death of a Johns Hopkins University student last week turned himself in early Tuesday morning and spoke with detectives, city police said. Police said the 39-year-old Sykesville man was released as detectives continued their investigation into the death of Miriam Frankl, 20, who was struck in the 3500 block of St. Paul St. at University Parkway on Friday afternoon. Spokesman Donny Moses said once the investigation is complete, police will turn over their findings to prosecutors, who will determine whether to pursue criminal charges.

Tony Fein, an Iraq war veteran who played for the Baltimore Ravens in the preseason and was arrested in a high-profile incident at the Inner Harbor, was found dead Tuesday in his home state of Washington, officials said. The 27-year-old linebacker was discovered face down and unconscious in the living room of a friend's townhouse in Port Orchard about 8:50 a.m., according to Mike Wernet, a battalion chief and medical officer for South Kitsap Fire and Rescue. Fein had vomited and was pronounced dead an hour later at a hospital, Wernet said.

On a Wednesday morning in August, Sangjin Lee, an immigrant from South Korea, left his $8-an-hour job as a bakery deliveryman, went through the turnstile at the West Falls Church Metro station and headed to the eastbound platform. He told his co-workers at Vie de France Yamazaki in Vienna that he had some things he needed to do. A six-car train bound for New Carrollton entered the station. Suddenly, there was a loud thud on the tracks, followed by an awful scream. Lee, 46, had thrown himself onto the tracks in front of the approaching train.

First of two parts on the trial of a teen in the shooting death of 16-year-old Deron Hope. Prosecutors said Kenny Robbins wanted to join a gang. But he didn't want to go through initiation rites that included taking a beatdown. His sponsor told him there was another way. He could kill somebody. And so shortly after midnight on Oct. 13, 2007, according to the Baltimore state's attorney's office, Robbins and his Black Guerrilla Family sponsor, William Key, set out to find a victim. Each had a handgun - one a .38-caliber revolver, the other a .22-caliber semiautomatic.

The Baltimore inspector general has issued a new report on the death of Robert Lee Clay, a prominent local businessman and minority business advocate whose May 2005 death, officially ruled a suicide, has been viewed with suspicion by family members and community leaders. But the mystery continues because the inspector, Hilton Green, would not say what he found. Green, whose job charges him with investigating waste, fraud and abuse in Baltimore, spent the past 5 1/2 months interviewing people he said were not available or willing to talk to city homicide investigators when they initially investigated the death.

Vigilantism is an ugly word, but it's one that's been on people's minds ever since the death under suspicious circumstances of Ronnie L. White last June in a Prince George's County detention facility. Mr. White had been brought there on a Friday, accused of killing a county police officer, Cpl. Richard S. Findley, during a botched carjacking. By Sunday, Mr. White was dead, after jail guards reportedly found him lying unconscious in his maximum-security cell. The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide when an autopsy revealed broken bones in the prisoner's neck, indicating he had been strangled.

Annapolis man killed; woman turns gun on self An Annapolis woman fatally shot a man she lived with before turning the gun on herself early Tuesday, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. Helen E. Clapsaddle, 43, and Michael J. Missimer, 39, were found dead of gunshot wounds in the master bedroom of their apartment in the 600 block of Admiral Drive minutes after a woman called police and said, "Get us or you will find two dead bodies," police said. Clapsaddle had been having financial problems and domestic issues with Missimer, police said.

The rare film to effectively combine humor and whiz-bang special effects (CGI and big budgets usually don't do funny well), Barry Sonnenfeld's 1997 Men in Black (7 p.m., TBS, repeats 9 p.m.) features the unlikely team of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as members of a super-secret government organization charged with keeping track of all the aliens among us. And by aliens, we mean real aliens, extraterrestrial beings with multiple heads, grotesque bodies (at least by our standards; I'm sure they're regarded as quite handsome on their home planets)

Cecil man is charged in shooting of deputy Maryland State Police said yesterday that they have charged a Cecil County man with attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of a Harford County sheriff's deputy during a drug raid Friday morning. James W. Ratledge, 60, of the 300 block of Old Conowingo Road in Conowingo, was under guard at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was recovering from three gunshot wounds he received during the incident, police said. The deputy, who was not identified, was released after treatment of minor injuries at a Havre de Grace hospital, police said.