Family Members

In Baltimore, authorities are finding that if they can't solve a robbery, the next best thing may be to set one up.  Five men - at least three who police say are members of the Black Guerilla Family - were indicted last week in federal court on robbery charges. They didn't commit a robbery, but were caught in recorded conversations with a government source planning and preparing to carry one out, according to court records.  It's a tactic that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has used at least three times here, and which the Federal Bureau of Investigation also used in a case involving a man charged with accepting a murder-for-hire proposal.  A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration - which was involved in this month's indictment - said the agency had "done this type of investigation many times before; all have been successful," but said he could not discuss the case in further detail.

A 20-year-old Baltimore man serving an 18-month prison sentence on drug distribution and gun convictions at a correctional facility in Cumberland was severely beaten there Monday and is now close to death, according to his family and state corrections officials. Jerod Pridget of East Baltimore was found unresponsive and with "severe head trauma" in his cell at the Western Correctional Institution just before noon Monday and was rushed to Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, officials said.

Reports of Odessa Jones' death were, in the end, an exaggeration. This week, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County sent an email to students and faculty saying that Jones, a student who attends classes at the Shady Grove campus, had died. The funeral was to be held Friday in Silver Spring. A few days later, the university sent another email with the subject line, "Comforting News for the UMBC Community. " Jones was in fact alive, it said. "I am pleased to report that, this morning, the UMBC Police learned from the Montgomery County Police Department that Odessa Jones, the student who reportedly passed away earlier this week, is alive," the email said.

As Jean Thomas helped her husband load furniture and boxes into a U-Haul truck parked outside their West Baltimore home Tuesday afternoon, she worried that she'd run out of time. She had lost a fight to stay in the rent-subsidized rowhouse on North Fremont Avenue where she and her husband, Sherman, had lived for seven years, recently with their daughter and four young grandchildren. Sheriff's deputies could arrive any minute to lock them out. The eviction deadline was Tuesday.

Nina Gill Stewart, an equestrienne and athlete, died of cancer Monday at her Unionville, Pa., home. The former Glyndon resident was 71. Born in Baltimore and raised at Meadow Run, her parents' home in Glyndon, she was the daughter of Redmond C. Stewart, a lawyer who owned Grand National steeplechase champion Ben Nevis II, and Ann Cochran Stewart, a fox hunter. She attended the Calvert School and was a 1959 Garrison Forest School graduate. She also earned a diploma at the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., and made her debut at the Bachelors Cotillion the same year.

Mildred Attman, who was a co-founder with her husband of the Acme Paper & Supply Co. and later became a homemaker, died Thursday of heart failure at Sinai Hospital. The longtime Pikesville resident was 88. The daughter of a successful businessman and a homemaker, Mildred Cohen was born and raised in Essex, where her father owned a grocery store, bowling alley and the New Essex Theater. Her family lived above the theater. "Mom reminisced wistfully about falling to sleep as she could hear the music from the golden age of cinema below her," a son, Gary L. Attman of Pikesville, said in a eulogy for his mother.

Before self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was brought into court Saturday, Carole Reuben of Potomac said his arraignment would mark "the beginning of the end of the process. " Her son, Todd Hayes Reuben, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner that was hijacked by five al-Qaida operatives and flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The Potomac man was 40. But any hope that the arraignments of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators might bring some healing to family members, a decade after they lost loved ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was stymied Saturday by a halting proceeding in which the defendants refused to participate.

Members of the public may watch the arraignment of self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terror suspects Saturday at Fort Meade, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday. Mohammed and his co-defendants are to be arraigned at Guantanamo Bay on charges of terrorism and murder in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 193. Fort Meade is one of four military bases scheduled to receive a secure, closed-circuit television feed of the proceedings, Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said.

Nick James Nopulos, former co-owner of Catonsville's venerable Double T Diner, died Saturday of complications from chronic lymphoma and leukemia at Howard County General Hospital. He was 91. The son of a barber and a homemaker who were Greek immigrants, he was born and raised in Weirton, W. Va., where he graduated in 1938 from Weir High School. In the late 1930s, he moved to Baltimore and took a job working for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and completed his training at Fort Devens, Mass.

James C. Koliha, a retired CSX executive who later became an owner of a landmark Towson tavern, died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer's disease at the Maples of Towson, an assisted-living facility. He was 86. The son of a Swift & Co. executive and a homemaker, Mr. Koliha was born in Cleveland and raised in Brecksville, Ohio, where he graduated from Brecksville High School in 1943. He enlisted in the Navy that year and served on Guam and Tinian as a carpenter's mate in the Seabees.