Fairfax County

A man freed from jail after Baltimore prosecutors bungled the armed robbery and carjacking case against him allegedly kidnapped and killed a witness in an unrelated crime seven months later, federal prosecutors said yesterday.Christopher Wills, whose case became emblematic of the systemwide breakdown and chronic trial delays at Baltimore's courthouse last year, was indicted on one count of "kidnapping resulting in death," the U.S. attorney's office in Virginia announced.If convicted, Wills could face a death sentence.

A Virginia man believed to have robbed 11 banks in Virginia and Maryland was arrested Saturday evening at his home, according to FBI officials.Thai Thanh Pham, 37, who shared a house with his parents in the 9600 block of Woodedge Drive in Burke, was charged by Fairfax County authorities with the Dec. 24 robbery of Wachovia Bank in Maryfield, Va. He was being held yesterday at Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.Pham is expected to be charged today by federal authorities in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with a Jan. 7 robbery of a bank in Falls Church, said Special Agent Susan E. Lloyd, spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington.

Successive lines of thunderstorms swept through Maryland, Washington and Virginia late yesterday afternoon, causing tens of thousands of customers to lose electric service. A tornado touched down in Fairfax County, Va.The more severe storms hit Northern Virginia, Washington and Maryland counties south and east of Baltimore beginning about 4 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.A tornado touched down about 4: 50 p.m. on the west side of Fairfax County near the Loudoun County-Prince William County line and left a swath of damage 13 miles long and 100 yards wide, the weather service reported.

When Mobil Corp. recently announced sizable layoffs at its Fairfax, Va. headquarters, the only thing more striking than the size of the cut -- 1,250 jobs -- was the sanguine reaction in Northern Virginia.Rather than view Mobil's downsizing as a catastrophe, several economists viewed it as a big hiccup for that area's economy. The Washington Post described it as a "two-week setback for the job-creation machinery in Northern Virginia." It made one wonder how such an announcement by a major firm would be greeted in the Baltimore area -- presumably with a lot more distress.

A pioneering Virginia company that plans to open a home for the elderly in Columbia's Hickory Ridge Village has been dogged by questions about several incidents involving residents -- including five deaths -- at facilities it operates in Maryland and Virginia.Sunrise Assisted Living of Fairfax, which goes before the Howard County Planning Board with site plans tomorrow, has been cleared of culpability in all but two of those deaths, say authorities in both states.However, in one of those cases, officials found that the company in January failed to provide proper first aid to the resident of a Sunrise home in Arlington, Va., who passed out while eating and who was left for dead in her room.

Soccer* Under-10 boys -- The Columbia Thunder began its season with mixed results at the recent Fairfax County (Va.) Ice Breaker Tournament.After shutting out the Manassas Hurricanes, 1-0, the Thunder were blanked by the Springfield Youth Club Lightning, 4-0.In the opener, Britton Boras scored the game-winner off a pass from Robert Tipton, and Brendan Carlin helped seal the victory with an outstanding performance in goal.But the team's momentum was short-lived, as it was unable to score against the Division I Lightning.

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Folks in Newt Gingrich country can go overboard. When the Cobb County (Ga.) Board of Commissioners got wind earlier this year of a local theater whose advertising for a production mentioned the word "gay," the commissioners first tried to block the theater from receiving county funds, then cut off all arts funding in the county.Cobb County is no rural backwater. It's a major suburb of Atlanta, home to 470,000 people. The largest employer is Lockheed.

The two men accused of the execution-style shootings Monday that left two Randallstown bank employees dead and two others seriously wounded have short police records, and one is a college graduate who co-owns a county cleaning business.Louis Hill III, 25, a new tenant of the Stevenson Lane Apartments in Rodgers Forge, and Benjamin Franklin Boisseau Jr., 23, of the 3100 block of Clifton Avenue, were both denied bail yesterday on charges of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery.Neither man spoke inside or outside the Towson District Court, where they appeared before Judge G. Darrell Russell.

WASHINGTON -- A Virginia school board has decided that students who taunt others with anti-homosexual remarks will be punished, possibly by suspension from school.The Fairfax County School Board's decision, believed to be one of the first of its kind, appears to defy a recent Supreme Court decision that ruled against "special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects."The board's unanimous decision was folded into a clause in the student code of conduct that prohibits harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender.

Convinced by personal observations that a trash-burning plant can bea clean, efficient producer of energy rather than a smoke-belching, environmentally hazardous eyesore, two county commissioners say they intend to form a citizens committee to begin planning a waste-to-energy facility for county use.Commissioners Donald I. Dell and ElmerC. Lippy, who toured the I-95 Energy/Resource Recovery Facility in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, said they believe the long-term answer toCarroll's solid-waste problems lies chiefly in converting trash to energy through incineration, not in landfill expansion or creation.

The days when free or at least cheap parking in the Washington suburbs was a right are waning fast. In an era of carbon footprints, greenhouse gases and crippling congestion, the goal of today's planners and politicians is maximum inconvenience for drivers. The District of Columbia is pulling up parking lots and putting in expensive meters and spots priced to move drivers out of their cars and onto a train, bus, bike or their feet. Montgomery County in Maryland and Fairfax County in Virginia are thinking along similar lines, considering changes to codes to reduce the number of parking spaces builders have to include.

Family of man slain by officer is awarded $3.7 million A Prince George's County jury awarded $3.7 million yesterday to the family of a Howard University student fatally shot by an undercover county officer in 2000, a case that helped spark a federal probe of the county force. The civil trial jury deliberated over two days before awarding the money to the parents and daughter of Prince Jones Jr. in a wrongful death lawsuit against the county, according to their attorney, Gregory Lattimer.

In light of a Supreme Court decision yesterday barring the execution of teen-age killers, a Virginia prosecutor is abandoning plans to try accused Washington-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, opening the possibility for other states -- Maryland included -- to move ahead with their cases. "I see no need to go the expense, the time and the trouble," said Paul B. Ebert, the aggressive prosecutor who has placed more people on death row than any other commonwealth's attorney in Virginia. Malvo has received multiple sentences of life in prison without parole in Virginia.

Steven W. Tipton was almost a free man. Tipton, a suspect in a recent rash of rooftop burglaries in Central Maryland, was arrested and charged Dec. 1, accused of attempting to break into a Northern Virginia dry cleaner. He posted a $10,000 bond early Tuesday morning and was released from the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. About 6 p.m., he went to the impoundment lot with his girlfriend to retrieve his car - but the car would not start. Tipton became upset and started to cause a "disturbance," according to Fairfax County police spokeswoman Mary Ann Jennings, though she said she could not elaborate on his actions.

FAIRFAX, Va. - The judge in what would have been the second capital murder trial of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad denied yesterday prosecutors' request to reconsider his dismissal of their case. Fairfax County Circuit Judge M. Langhorne Keith ended the high-profile case Friday when he ruled that prosecutors failed to try Muhammad within five months of their January request that Prince William County, Va., jailers hold him on the Fairfax County charges. Prosecutors immediately asked the judge to reconsider his decision.

FAIRFAX, Va. - A Fairfax County judge dismissed capital murder charges against convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad yesterday, saying prosecutors violated his right to a speedy trial in the 2002 killing of an FBI analyst. On the eve of the second anniversary of the Washington area's sniper shootings, Judge M. Langhorne Keith ruled that a detainer placed on Muhammad by Fairfax County in January started the clock ticking on the five-month window in which he should have been brought to trial.

The judge who was to preside over the next capital murder trial of John Allen Muhammad has abruptly recused himself, after prosecutors alleged that he wrongly conducted his own investigation into whether the convicted sniper has been denied a speedy trial. In a letter to prosecutors and defense lawyers made public yesterday, Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jonathan C. Thacher wrote that he is stepping aside but denied that he did anything improper. "The focus has recently been diverted away from the legal issues in this case, and needs to be redirected to the prosecution of Mr. Muhammad and the issues therein," Thacher wrote in a short letter dated Monday.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Lawyers for John Allen Muhammad failed yesterday to prevent a second capital murder trial in Virginia for the convicted sniper, after a judge ruled that another prosecution for his alleged role in the sniper shootings does not constitute double jeopardy or violate state law. However, Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jonathan C. Thacher delayed ruling on a defense claim that Muhammad's right to a speedy trial was violated. Although he was arrested in October 2002 and indicted the next month, his lawyers say, prosecutors waited until May to hand him the documents charging him with killing 47-year-old FBI analyst Linda Franklin.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- A judge said yesterday that Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. can prosecute convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad in his second capital murder trial, rejecting a defense bid to bar the veteran prosecutor and his staff from trying Muhammad in the shooting death of FBI analyst Linda Franklin. Muhammad's defense lawyers argued that Horan took the position at Lee Boyd Malvo's trial that the teenager fired the fatal shot killing Franklin on Oct. 14, 2002, and that Horan's current contention that Muhammad was a principal in the shooting was inconsistent with that.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Somber and silent to the end, 19- year-old Lee Boyd Malvo was given two life sentences without parole yesterday for his role in the suburban sniper attacks that left 10 dead during three weeks of terror around the nation's capital in October 2002. Malvo, believed to have been the triggerman in most if not all of the killings, said nothing during the 13-minute hearing and hung his head as sheriff's deputies escorted him from a courtroom packed with relatives of those he shot with a high-powered rifle.