Escalator

Engineers and inspectors began searching yesterday for clues to the escalator accident that injured more than 40 baseball fans at Camden Yards last weekend, but they said it will take days to pinpoint the cause.High-top sneakers remained stuck in the mangled steps as the escalator manufacturer and state officials began dismantling the three-story-high staircase yesterday morning.State regulators said work would continue at the site through tomorrow but that it is likely to take longer to discover why fans were sent tumbling Saturday.

A Baltimore man has been charged with murder in the slaying of a security guard last weekend at Tee Bee's Bar in Parkville, Baltimore County police said. Police said Saturday they arrested Haywood Trice, 25, of the 1500 block of N. Wolfe St., and charged him with first-degree murder and possession of a dangerous weapon with intent to injure. Trice is being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center. County police said they responded to reports of a fight at the bar, in the 7100 block of Darlington Drive, at 1:30 a.m. Sept.

The Camden Yards escalator that injured 44 fans when it malfunctioned last month often carried more weight than its state-approved capacity, based on a comparison of inspection records and fans' accounts.State records show that the first-base side escalator, which stretches from the ground-level concourse to the upper deck, is approved to carry up to 80 people -- or 16,000 pounds.But several victims of the June 18 accident say that more than 150 people were aboard the escalator when it stopped moving up, reversed direction and sent frightened fans on a free fall.

When I was a little kid, there was a game I used to play while out and about with my family. Every time we came upon an escalator, I'd run ahead and charge up it as fast as I could, just so I could then stand at the top and "pull" everyone else up by the moving handrail. When they joined me at the top, I'd proudly claim full responsibility. No one could escape being pawns in my victory if they were on that escalator. It was their own fault if they didn't take the stairs. I was about 5 at the time.

A department store employee injured Saturday at The Mall in Columbia when her head became wedged between the rail of an escalator and a low ceiling remained in critical condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, authorities said. Andrea Albright, 24, of Cedar Lane in Columbia, an employee of J.C. Penney at the mall, was riding up the escalator and leaning over the rail about 4:40 p.m. when her head became caught, according to police and fire officials. It took rescue personnel about 20 minutes to free the unconscious woman.

A broken metal shaft caused the Camden Yards escalator accident that injured 44 people last month, Bruce E. Hoffman, executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority confirmed yesterday. But investigators still haven't determined why the shaft broke, he said.Meanwhile, he announced that four of the five escalators at the ballpark will be operating for tonight's game as the Orioles return to town for a 10-game homestand.The right field-side escalator that malfunctioned June 18 will remain out of service while a San Antonio laboratory examines parts damaged in the accident, Mr. Hoffman said.

The mechanical system used in the escalator that collapsed at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in June will not be used in the ballpark again and will not be produced any more, said the escalator's manufacturer.Timothy L. Duin, vice president of risk management at Montgomery Elevator Co., said the company will install a standard type of drive system that has been used widely for about 30 years.The failure of the 55-foot escalator -- the ballpark's longest -- in June sent 43 people to local hospitals.

A lawsuit stemming from last month's escalator accident at Camden Yards was filed yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court by the parents of an Ellicott City teen-ager.In their $2.6 million suit, James Terrill and Nancy Terrill claim that Montgomery Elevator Co., of Moline, Ill., was negligent for failing to adequately inspect, maintain, repair and install the escalator that transports fans from the ballpark's concourse to the upper deck.Their son, Bradley Terrill, 17, attended the June 18 Orioles game and was about three-quarters of the way up the escalator when it went into reverse at high speed before coming to an abrupt stop, the suit says.

The Camden Yards escalator accident that injured more than 40 baseball fans Saturday was caused when a metal shaft broke, sending the moving staircase "freewheeling" downward at high speed, specialists close to the investigation say.The tear in the shaft left the escalator's safety brakes ineffective, and the staircase continued its near free fall until several steps were mangled at the bottom. After the accident, a sneaker was left wedged in the jumble.Michael T. Shiflet, a consultant hired by Forensic Technologies International of Annapolis, said the break occurred within a large assembly that moves the steps along and is supposed to stop the escalator when problems occur.

Fun and games can become a precarious experience. Yes, even life and death. Consider what happened to Charles Joseph Lusco. Little wonder his best friends continue referring to him as "Lucky" Lusco. He was involved in the Memorial Stadium escalator accident that killed a schoolmate and injured 48 children in 1964 and, a week ago, was only minutes removed from the moving stairway at Oriole Park when another malfunction occurred."Lucky" Lusco felt as if a serious moment in his life was being replayed.

Most Americans probably haven't given much thought to the botched gun trafficking investigation by theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosivesknown as "Fast and Furious. " What they do know are probably the most embarrassing details - agents lost track of 2,000 guns that were allowed to "walk" in order to investigate higher-ups in a drug cartel, and two ATF weapons were found at the scene of a 2010 shootout in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. But this week, the matter is threatening to evolve into something much larger.

A fight among a group of teenagers and one man Wednesday afternoon at the Upton Metro Station sent two people to the hospital and closed the station for about three hours, according to Maryland Transit Administration Police. The fight caused chaos in the station, as the teens threw yellow cones, a mop and a trash can at the man as they moved through the station, according to Sharon Allen, an Upton resident who witnessed parts of the fight. "It was pandemonium, so you really didn't know what was going on," Allen said.

The bizarre plot federal law enforcement officials described Tuesday in which elements of the Iranian government are accused of trying to blow up Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. with explosives planted in a Washington restaurant sounds like something out of a spy novel. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III acknowledged as much at the news conference announcing the arrest of one of the alleged conspirators. Yet if true, the charges represent an unprecedented and intolerable provocation by a regime long known for exporting terrorism, and they demand the strongest possible response - short of direct military action - from the U.S. and the international community.

Debbie Yow and Gary Williams are like that couple that called it quits years ago, but whenever you run into them, you still get the sense they'd like to stab each other in the eyeballs. Wow, is this a feud for the ages or what? Yow, of course, is the former Maryland athletic director who used to get along with Williams, the current Terps basketball coach, the way the Bloods get along with the Crips. But when Yow took over as the AD at North Carolina State last year, you thought maybe that was the end of the sniping between the two. Of course, by now we know it wasn't.

A state Senate budget panel is poised to make deep cuts to Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget for next year, with some lawmakers discussing state spending reductions of $500 million to $600 million. Such cuts, if they are made, would go far beyond the changes the majority Democratic body has made in past years to the governor's plan and reflects mounting concern among senators about growing deficits and a belief that voters want to see more fiscal responsibility this year. The governor's $13 billion operating budget avoids major spending cuts to state services, instead relying on one-time accounting maneuvers and hundreds of millions in federal stimulus dollars to balance revenue shortfalls.

KABUL, Afghanistan - -A powerful truck bomb on Thursday killed at least 25 people, more than half of them children, in an eastern province near Kabul. Authorities speculated that the explosives-laden vehicle was intended for an attack in the capital. Three American soldiers were killed by roadside bombs, the U.S. military said, two in southern Afghanistan and one in the east. The incidents followed a pattern of escalating violence in widely scattered areas of Afghanistan. The truck blast took place in Lowgar province.

When JCPenney purchased the old Woodward & Lothrop store in Columbia, it wanted to add shelves and displays to showcase the new wares to shoppers as they glided between floors. But the death of a store clerk who could not breathe after her head became wedged between the escalator's moving handrail and the new display, has her family convinced that the designers were negligent. Andrea Albright, a 24-year-old single mother, was riding the up escalator at the Penney store in The Mall in Columbia on June 15, 2002.

On the afternoon of April 12, 1991, Pierre Taylor was descending an escalator at The Mall in Columbia -- a common routine in his job as a mall security guard.The 28-year-old Baltimore resident says in court documents that when he was about halfway down the escalator, it jerked to a stop and caused him to tumble about 15 steps, knocking him unconscious.Contending that he was caused anxiety and mental anguish and left partially disabled, Mr. Taylor is seeking $700,000 in damages from the Montgomery Elevator Co., a Beltsville firm that maintains the escalator, according to a lawsuit filed in Howard Circuit Court Jan. 7.The suit contends that Montgomery was negligent in failing to properly maintain the escalator to avoid such an incident.

In middle school, they were friends, playing in the same local football league. Some kids played for the Crofton Cardinals. Others wore the jerseys of the Odenton Wildcats. It was innocent then, when the Cardinals - three seasons undefeated - began calling themselves TNT, or The New Threat. The kids from Odenton became ESD, or the East Side Diamonds. Born of a sports rivalry, the two groups developed into what Anne Arundel County police are calling dangerous gangs. A resulting conflict left 14-year-old Christopher David Jones dead late last month.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops and tanks thrust into the Gaza Strip's densely populated capital from three directions yesterday, drawing Hamas fighters into fierce combat in an offensive expanded by a fresh deployment of army reservists. High-rise apartments shook, and smaller, targeted buildings crumbled in Gaza City under the force of Israeli artillery shelling and missiles fired from helicopters. Plumes of black smoke rose as Hamas fighters answered with mortars, automatic rifles and grenades.