Foul Play

Anne Arundel County police are investigating the death of a woman found early Sunday slumped in a car parked near the Anne Arundel Community College satellite building in Hanover, not far from Arundel Mills mall. Fire Department rescue crews responding to the 5:30 a.m. call from Arundel Mills mall security officers found an African-American woman who appeared to be in her early 20s in the vehicle near 7009 Arundel Mills Circle and determined she was dead, police said. Police said they saw no obvious signs of foul play.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office said on Tuesday that an autopsy has revealed no foul play in the death of a 17-year-old whose body was found last month along a road in Finksburg. According to the Sheriff's Office, the Maryland State Medical Examiner's Office said Caleb Lee Mott died from natural causes related to diabetes. The medical examiner's autopsy found no signs of trauma during the examination, the sheriff's office reported. At approximately 11 a.m., on Oct. 12, sheriff's deputies responded to a wooded area along the 2100 block of Sandymount Road for a report of an unconscious male.

Last year, when a man was killed after going down a trash chute in downtown Baltimore's Park Charles apartment building, residents grudgingly accepted the police conclusion that the death was a bizarre accident. But after a recent Loyola University Maryland graduate — identified by police as 23-year-old Emily Hauze — died in a similar way Sunday, people who live in the Charles Center high-rise are not sure whether to believe that the deaths could be a tragic coincidence. "You wouldn't think that it could happen again," said Phillip Flanders, a 26-year-old graduate engineering student at the Johns Hopkins University who has lived on the building's ninth floor through both deaths.

A Severn man who did not return home Friday night was found dead in a nearby stream Saturday morning, Anne Arundel County police said. Peter Anthony Dembrowicz, 30, of the 100-block of Gambrills Road, was found in the nearby Severn Run stream, police said. "We think he might have had a medical condition" that contributed, or that he might have gotten stuck trying to cross the stream, said Lt. Michael Brothers, a police spokesman. Police said there is no indication of foul play or any suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Baltimore County police said Wednesday they suspect foul play in the case of a Russian woman who went missing in February as she was traveling to visit relatives in Catonsville. Yulia Pogrebenko, 54, arrived Feb. 23 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and rented a car to drive to Maryland. She made a phone call to a family member to say she was about an hour from Baltimore, police said, but has not been heard from since. Pogrebenko was initially reported missing to Russian police, who notified Baltimore County authorities Thursday, according to police spokesman Lt. Robert McCullough.

A 26-year man who was found dead last month in a basement storage room of an empty Jessup house died from cocaine intoxication, according to a preliminary autopsy report by the state's medical examiner. Elizabeth Schroen, a by Howard County police spokeswoman, said Thursday that "there was no foul play" in Najib Malik Abdullah's death and that police are still trying to determine whether his death was an accident or suicide. Police discovered Abdullah's body April 30 after the owners of the house, located in the 8700 block of Mary Lane, smelled a strong odor coming from behind the door to the storage room.

The body of an apparently homeless man was found Tuesday afternoon on the grounds of Lutherville Laboratory Elementary School. Police said later there were no signs of foul play. Charles Herndon, a spokesman for the Baltimore County school system, said the school's principal sent a telephone message to all students' families informing them of the discovery of the body in bushes on the school's property, near its rear perimeter. Herndon said counselors will be at the school on Wednesday to deal with any emotional fallout from the find.

A body found in a wooded area in Annapolis Saturday was identified as a man reported missing almost a month ago, Annapolis police said. Dior Lee Curtis, 21, was identified after his body was found by dog walker near the 1000 block of Primrose Road just before noon, police said. His body was badly decomposed and was taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for an autopsy, which did not reveal signs of trauma. Police said the cause of death has not been determined. Police said there does not appear to be any evidence of foul play.

Annapolis police say they found a body in a wooded area late Saturday morning, after responding to a report from a dog walker in a wooded area near the 1000 block of Primrose Road. Detectives remained on the scene most of the day in an attempt to determine a cause of death, police said. The body had obviously been there for a long time and was badly decomposed, police said. Investigators at the scene were unable to determine the gender or whether foul play was involved in the death, police said.

Baltimore police on Tuesday launched an extensive search and investigation into the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl, involving an elite FBI team and more than 100 officers who scoured a secluded city park for hours. Authorities all but ended their search in Leakin Park around dusk, having found no signs of a body or clues to the whereabouts of Phylicia Simone Barnes of North Carolina, who had been visiting her older sister in Northwest Baltimore when she apparently vanished the afternoon of Dec. 28. Detectives suspect foul play and have said it's a possible the teen was abducted and taken out of state.