Escape Attempt

A man driving a vehicle that had been reported stolen tried to elude Baltimore police Monday afternoon on West North Avenue and crashed into three parked cars, causing all four vehicles to burst into flames and melting the siding of several townhouses, according to city police. The suspect ran from the burning cars and boarded a Maryland Transit Administration bus, where officers arrested him. Police said charges are pending against the man. In the wild escape attempt, authorities said the driver of the sport utility vehicle, which had been reported stolen in Washington, collided with a car, causing minor damage and injuries, and ran over mailboxes before hitting the parked vehicles and catching fire.

A man driving a vehicle that had been reported stolen tried to elude Baltimore police Monday afternoon on West North Avenue and crashed into three parked cars, causing all four vehicles to burst into flames and melting the siding of several townhouses, according to city police. The suspect ran from the burning cars and boarded a Maryland Transit Administration bus, where officers arrested him. Police said charges are pending against the man. In the wild escape attempt, authorities said the driver of the sport utility vehicle, which had been reported stolen in Washington, collided with a car, causing minor damage and injuries, and ran over mailboxes before hitting the parked vehicles and catching fire.

A 34-year-old inmate who tried to scale a fence at the House of Correction in Jessup surrendered after officers opened fire in his direction, said a corrections spokesman.Inmate Randolph McDowell, of Baltimore, made the "spontaneous" escape attempt about 3 p.m. yesterday while he and 138 other inmates were in the recreation yard at the House of Correction, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., director of public information for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services."He bolted over an interior fence toward two perimeter security fences in the southwest corner of the yard," Sipes said.

Baltimore authorities were searching for a man who was arrested for attempted murder but escaped from a downtown police building after wriggling free of his plastic handcuffs. Police said Paul Bryan Palmer, 32, was taken into custody on a warrant charging him with attacking a man last month near City Hall. About 1 p.m. Friday, Palmer was to be transported to Central Booking and Intake Center when he complained of a hand injury and was taken back into the lobby of the department's Central District building on Baltimore Street, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

An inmate accused in the fatal stabbing of a correctional officer in 2006 tried to escape yesterday evening while being examined at Mercy Medical Center, less than a mile from the Super Max prison where he was being held, a spokesman for the state's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said. Rick Binetti, the spokesman, said Lamarr C. Harris, 37, was being examined for an undetermined illness or injury about 6 p.m. at Mercy Medical Center on North Calvert Street when Harris tried to flee by "taking a couple of steps" and was immediately restrained by four Super Max officers and at least two hospital security personnel.

The day after a man with a history of escape attempts tried to flee a courtroom as his murder trial was getting under way, a Howard County Circuit Court judge dismissed the entire jury pool and asked the lawyers whether he should recuse himself from the case. Brandon T. Morris, 21, tried to escape from Judge Dennis M. Sweeney's courtroom during jury selection Thursday. Two sheriff's deputies and two potential jurors received minor injuries during the ruckus, which resulted in Morris being wrestled to the floor by security officers.

The attempted escape of a condemned inmate has prompted internal criticism of security at the Maryland Penitentiary and may lead officials to move Maryland's death-row prisoners to a super-maximum security prison.In a confidential memorandum on the Dec. 6 escape attempt of Scotland Eugene Williams, made available to The Sun, penitentiary warden Eugene M. Nuth wrote that the prison "is not a good maximum security facility" and that its routines "are too predictable."It is no secret that the maximum security designation of the penitentiary applies to the inmates, not to the ability of the facility to deliver maximum security," the warden wrote in the memorandum dated Dec. 18.Despite the warden's concerns, escapes from the penitentiary are rare.

Prison officials searching a cell block where inmates held two correctional officers hostage this week found several homemade weapons yesterday, but not the second of two guns they believe inmates used in a failed escape attempt."

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- When troops from the 101st Airborne landed on an island in a dawn raid for insurgents, they encountered shoeless men, women, sheep, bags of raw wool, a pistol and a smattering of Kalashnikovs, according to testimony yesterday during a hearing for soldiers accused of murdering three Iraqis on May 9. "This surprised you, right?" prosecutor William Fischbach asked Spc. Micah Bivens on cross-examination. "You thought you were going to go in there guns blazing, and you came up with a dry hole."

While a prison security audit was under way, two inmates were stabbed yesterday during a fight at the House of Correction Annex in Jessup, authorities reported. One inmate -- a 39-year-old serving a life sentence for rape -- was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was listed in stable condition, said Dave Towers, a spokesman for the state Division of Corrections. The other -- a 25-year-old serving life for first-degree murder -- was treated at the prison's medical unit, Towers said.

An inmate accused in the fatal stabbing of a correctional officer in 2006 tried to escape yesterday evening while being examined at Mercy Medical Center, less than a mile from the Super Max prison where he was being held, a spokesman for the state's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said. Rick Binetti, the spokesman, said Lamarr C. Harris, 37, was being examined for an undetermined illness or injury about 6 p.m. at Mercy Medical Center on North Calvert Street when Harris tried to flee by "taking a couple of steps" and was immediately restrained by four Super Max officers and at least two hospital security personnel.

The Howard County Sheriff's Office will take extra security measures for the capital murder trial this week of Brandon T. Morris, who attempted to flee a Howard County courtroom in May during jury-selection proceedings. His trial is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Howard County Circuit Court. Morris, 22, of Baltimore is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of corrections officer Jeffery A. Wroten in January 2006 during an attempted escape from Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown, where Morris had been taken for treatment of self-inflicted wounds.

The day after a man with a history of escape attempts tried to flee a courtroom as his murder trial was getting under way, a Howard County Circuit Court judge dismissed the entire jury pool and asked the lawyers whether he should recuse himself from the case. Brandon T. Morris, 21, tried to escape from Judge Dennis M. Sweeney's courtroom during jury selection Thursday. Two sheriff's deputies and two potential jurors received minor injuries during the ruckus, which resulted in Morris being wrestled to the floor by security officers.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- When troops from the 101st Airborne landed on an island in a dawn raid for insurgents, they encountered shoeless men, women, sheep, bags of raw wool, a pistol and a smattering of Kalashnikovs, according to testimony yesterday during a hearing for soldiers accused of murdering three Iraqis on May 9. "This surprised you, right?" prosecutor William Fischbach asked Spc. Micah Bivens on cross-examination. "You thought you were going to go in there guns blazing, and you came up with a dry hole."

The problems at Maryland's troubled prisons in Jessup continued yesterday as authorities thwarted an attempted escape by an inmate serving a life sentence for attempted murder. State prison officials said the inmate scaled an interior fence at the Maryland House of Correction Annex and was trying to get past razor wire and over another fence to the outside before he was ordered down by a correctional officer patrolling the prison perimeter. "He was not being combative, he was compliant," said Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction.

In his first public remarks since reports this week of abuse at state-run juvenile detention facilities, Maryland's Juvenile Services secretary said yesterday that his agency is making steady progress in reforming the troubled system. But at a news conference called to bring attention to improvements, Secretary Kenneth C. Montague Jr. also was forced to address yet another security lapse - a near escape Wednesday from the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in which two youths armed with scissors locked two staff members in a room.

A 19-year-old Edgemere man was found innocent yesterday of charges connected to a narrowly thwarted mass escape from the Baltimore County Detention Center.The April 28 escape attempt was prevented after two guards discovered a hole that had been made in a wall in the maximum security area.The defendant, David B. Simms, had been moved into the cell that day with the man who dug through the wall. Circuit Judge J. Norris Byrnes said there was insufficient proof that Simms participated. The man convicted in the escape attempt testified for him.Mark Phillip French, 29, a former Essex contractor who was in the center after being convicted of shooting a county police officer, said Simms wasn't involved.

Harold Benjamin Dean -- the first convict to escape from Maryland's "Supermax" prison -- was among the five inmates accused in an attempted breakout from another maximum-security facility this week, authorities said yesterday. The convicts -- all serving life terms for murder or robbery -- had 242 feet of nylon-braided rope, a grappling hook with a 3-foot curved steel rod, and a pair of toenail clippers, said Lt. Priscilla Doggett, spokeswoman for the state Division of Correction. She was unable to confirm accounts given to The Sun by two corrections officers that the inmates also had a pulley, mountain-climbing rings, hacksaw blades and a rope-ladder with socks tied as rungs.

MOSCOW - Russia's top utilities official, hated by many Russians for engineering the country's murky post-Soviet state sell-offs, survived an assassination attempt yesterday when assailants attacked his armored car with a roadside bomb and a hail of gunfire. No one was injured in the attack, which left the hood of Anatoly Chubais' black BMW riddled with bullets. Chubais' driver was able to speed away and get the businessman to his offices in downtown Moscow, where he heads Russia's state-controlled electricity monopoly, Unified Energy Systems.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Ten people were killed and 10 others were wounded yesterday as a top Pakistani military general escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen ambushed his motorcade in Karachi, officials said. The intended target of the attack, Lt. Gen. Ahsan Salim Hayat, was unhurt. Six soldiers, three police officers and a pedestrian were killed, according to the military. For more than a month, a wave of violence and sectarian turmoil has gripped Pakistan, from the mountainous northern city of Gilgit to the sprawling southern port city of Karachi.