Fingerprints

A body found early Monday in a wooded area of Columbia's Long Reach village has been identified as Oakland Mills resident Antonio Ayala, Howard County police said yesterday. The 33-year-old man was identified by his fingerprints, police said. A lawn maintenance worker spotted Ayala's body about 10:30 a.m. Monday behind the Sierra Woods apartment complex, police said. The death has been classified as suspicious, but county police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said there was no obvious cause of death.

Maryland senators alternatively questioned, challenged and heralded Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun-control bill for more than two hours Tuesday, a prelude to a debate expected to stretch through the week as lawmakers wrestle over whether to enact some of the country's strictest gun laws. Senators argued at length over whether to require a license to buy a handgun - a provision gun-control experts consider essential to stemming gun violence in Maryland but that opponents find unfair. While proponents say requiring fingerprints and training for a license makes it less likely someone would buy a gun only to pass it off to a criminal, Sen. E.J. Pipkin called licensing “a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in Maryland.” Pipkin, an Eastern Shore Republican, discounted research by a Johns Hopkins policy expert on whom Democratic leaders on gun control have relied.

In an attempt to identify a boy who drowned in the Severn River on Saturday, Anne Arundel County police took the boy's fingerprints yesterday and sent them to the FBI, county police Sgt. William Collier said. Collier said the youth, who was pulled from the Severn about 8:30 a.m. Saturday, had no identification nor identifying marks such as tattoos, nor did the body match any descriptions in the county's missing-persons file. The FBI will check the fingerprints against a national database.

This week may well be the time when lawmakers in Annapolis decide whether the gun control legislation they pass in the wake of the Newton, Conn., school shooting actually does some good to reduce the rates of violence in Maryland or just sounds good at election time. Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal made it through the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee last week with its key provisions largely intact. But that progress is at serious risk when the bill hits the Senate floor, likely tomorrow or Wednesday.

Anne Arundel County police still do not know the name of the suspect in Friday night's Annapolis Mall jewelry store robbery and have sent the man's fingerprints to the FBI for identification, county police said yesterday.Nothing showed up when the fingerprints of the man, who was fatally shot during a foiled robbery at the mall's Kay Jewelers store, were run through Anne Arundel County's databases, said Cpl. Ron Himes, a police spokesman.He said county police, who also are running fingerprint checks with neighboring counties, expect an answer from the FBI today.

A Northeast Baltimore man has been arrested and charged with raping an 18-year-old woman - a crime reported nearly two decades ago. Police said analysis of fingerprints taken from the crime scene led to the arrest. The victim, whose identity police declined to disclose, was sleeping early on an October morning in 1983 when a man broke into her North Baltimore apartment and raped her, police said. Two fingerprints found in the house were stored with other evidence because detectives had no suspects and there was no state or national fingerprint database at the time, police said.

Having fingered their 500th suspect, Maryland's high-tech fingerprinting gurus celebrated yesterday and said their "star wars" technology will keep criminals from hiding behind phony names."

Police lifted Margaret Courson's fingerprints from a notebook in the sport utility truck owned by the 21-year-old Shady Side man charged in her death, according to testimony in Anne Arundel Circuit Court yesterday.The victim's fingerprint was perhaps the most damaging evidence provided yesterday in the second day of testimony in the trial of Alvin Winslow Gross, 21, of the 4800 block of Atwell Road, Shady Side.Mr. Gross is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree rape, kidnapping and handgun violations in the Dec. 9, 1993, death of Ms. Courson, a waitress and laborer who lived in a rooming house in the 100 block of Prince George St.He is being tried before Judge Bruce C. Williams.

In an attempt to identify a boy who drowned in the Severn River on Saturday, Anne Arundel County police took the boy's fingerprints yesterday and sent them to the FBI, county police Sgt. William Collier said. Collier said the youth, who was pulled from the Severn about 8:30 a.m. Saturday, had no identification nor identifying marks such as tattoos, nor did the body match any descriptions in the county's missing-persons file. The FBI will check the fingerprints against a national database.

Witnesses testified yesterday in the trial of the man charged in the killing of Baltimore police Officer Michael J. Cowdery that the gun found next to the suspect was used to kill Cowdery, but no fingerprints were found on the weapon. Assistant State's Attorney Donald Giblin has told the jury for a week and a half that Howard T. Whitworth is a "cold-blooded cop killer" who shot Cowdery in the leg, then grabbed him by his hooded sweat shirt and shot him in the head as he lay on the sidewalk.

Like columnist Dan Rodricks , I have no problem at all with collecting the DNA and the fingerprints of everyone ("DNA: Why wait for an arrest?" May 3). The only people who should disagree are those who intend to commit some kind of crime. Since I have no intention of breaking the law, the only reason police for the courts would to use my DNA or fingerprints would be to exonerate me of a crime of which I had been falsely accused. As Dan points out, police and court time would be reduced considerably.

Robert M. Stock, a retired electrical engineer and FBI fingerprint pioneer whose work led to the establishment of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at his Severna Park home. He was 83. The son of a restaurant purveyor and a homemaker, he was born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y., where he graduated from Eastwood High School in 1946. He served in the Army Signal Corps from 1946 to 1949, and then enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in a five-year program that allowed him to earn both his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1954 in electrical engineering.

I was astonished to see bare hands on the pages of a 400-year-old King James Bible in a photograph on The Sun's front page ("Stevenson to house first edition of King James Bible," April 3). I was then stunned by the photo on the inside page of this article showing that the bare hands flipping pages belonged to the director of the Maryland Bible Society and Stevenson University's "archivist. " Isn't it standard archival practice to use gloves when handling documentary artifacts?

Julio Cesar Ayala knew he was taking a risk when he decided to overstay his tourist visa four years ago, but he never expected to be threatened with deportation for climbing behind the wheel of the family's silver minivan. The 53-year-old Salvadoran was stopped by a Baltimore County police officer last year and had to admit that he didn't have a driver's license. Hours after he was handcuffed and separated from his 9-year-old granddaughter on the side of the road, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received an automatic notification of his arrest through a controversial and burgeoning federal program called Secure Communities.

The Bel Air Police Department, the Bel Air Lions Club and Tiny Toes, a Main Street business, hosted their yearly "Kid Print" Child Safety Fair in Shamrock Park on Oct. 8 and more than 300 children enjoyed the fun. The program was free and children were treated to pony rides, face painting, McGruff the Crime Dog, ice cream, hot dogs and a moon bounce. Town Department of Public Works vehicles were on display as well which included a trash truck, dump truck and front end loader.

The decomposed body of a male found in the back of a locked truck at a city impound lot has been taken by the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy, police said Thursday morning. The body was discovered Wednesday afternoon at about 4 p.m. in the 6700 block of Pulaski Highway after city workers smelled a foul odor. The body was recovered in the back of a 2002 Ford box truck, and police say there were no obvious signs of trauma. Officials were working to identify the body through fingerprints.

MIAMI -- A former FBI fingerprint specialist testified yesterday that terrorism suspect Jose Padilla's fingerprints match at least seven of 45 latent prints found on an alleged application for al-Qaida jihad training. But Padilla's public defenders cast doubt on the validity of the prints and the so-called Mujahedeen Data Form, a cornerstone of the government's case. The form has been described by other expert witnesses as a would-be jihadist's "pledge" to fight on behalf of embattled Muslims abroad.

Howard County police have obtained a warrant for the arrest of a suspect in connection with a bank robbery that occurred March 19 at FCNB Bank on Twin Knolls Road in Columbia.The suspect has been identified by fingerprints as Tyrone Kavon Franklin, 20, of the 4800 block of Reisterstown Road in Baltimore, police said. The warrant was issued for robbery, felony, theft, second-degree assault and possession of cocaine.Police say a man entered the FCNB bank about 2: 30 p.m. March 19 and handed the teller a threatening note demanding money and implying that he had a gun.After robbing a teller of an undisclosed amount of cash, the man fled on foot, shedding a brown wig and a jacket.

The fingerprint of one of two people charged with murder in the death of a dentist in his Glen Burnie office was found in the dentist's storage closet, police and lawyers in court on Friday. The disclosure came during a defense effort to block from trial the statement that Dante Jeter, 34, gave Anne Arundel County police detectives when they questioned him about the Sept. 26, 2006, slaying of Albert Woonho Ro. Detective John Gajda testified that he and another investigator asked Jeter on Oct. 9, 2009, why police found his fingerprint on an electric toothbrush box in a closet in Ro's office.

A 43-year-old man has been indicted in a break-in and attempted rape case from 1997 after a fingerprint on a window screen led police to the man earlier this year. Marco Moncello Kornegay of Riverdale now faces charges including first-degree attempted rape, first-degree sexual assault, first-degree burglary and indecent exposure. He is free on $150,0000 bond, according to electronic court records. According to charging documents, Kornegay was naked except for a bandana over part of his face when he broke into an apartment in the 11000 block of Little Patuxent Parkway in July 1997 and attacked a woman.