Fugitive

For nearly four years, Nakia Parrine had difficulty getting a job to support her family. Wanted on minor drug charges, she said she constantly looked over her shoulder, aware that any interaction with police might result in her arrest and hours at Central Booking. But in less than a few hours Wednesday, that was all behind her. As part of a program called Safe Surrender, she turned herself in, got booked, faced a judge, had the charges dropped, and began the expungement process.

The body found Friday in the Triadelphia Reservoir on the Patuxent River has been identified as a 46-year-old Gaithersburg man wanted for attempted murder, carjacking and assault in Howard County. Montgomery County Police said the man was Robert Lewis Thornton, who was being sought for an incident near the reservoir late May 12 in which he drove a truck into the rear of a vehicle driven by a female friend he had earlier argued with, forcing her off Brighton Dam Road. He is alleged to have chased her into the woods, threatened her life and cut her in the neck before fleeing when a passerby called police.

More than eight years and at least two aliases later, Bryan Anthony Hale is back in jail in Howard County after failing to appear in Circuit Court in December 2001 after police seized 75 pounds of marijuana from his Sykesville home. Hale was extradited to Maryland last week after being identified through fingerprints following an arrest March 13 in Austin, Texas, on charges of driving under the influence and using a fictitious name, Jason Taylor Beam. His bond of $50,000 was revoked.

Thousands of fugitives being sought on minor warrants for crimes committed in Baltimore and Baltimore County are being urged to turn themselves in this month and expedite their cases at a makeshift court set up in a West Baltimore church and outreach center. The Fugitive Safe Surrender program will run June 16-19 and is aimed at offenders being sought on nonviolent felony or misdemeanor warrants. The warrant backlog is at more than 40,000, and Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake said tens of thousands of people live in fear or are unable to get jobs because they are unwilling to get the warrants cleared.

MASARYKTOWN -- A man charged in the 2008 rape of a teenage girl near Salisbury, Md., was arrested Thursday by Hernando County Sheriff's deputies. Randy Keith Mosley, 51, was staying at a family member's house at 436 Korbus Road near the corner of County Line Road and U.S. 41 and was taken into custody shortly after 10:30 pm., deputies said. In early 2008, Mosley raped a 16-year-old girl, according to detectives with the Maryland State Police. The victim pleaded for him to stop and tried to fight him off, but the bigger, stronger Mosley forcibly had sex with her, according to a media release.

It sounds like a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. An inmate at a prison in Western Maryland files a piddling lawsuit on the Eastern Shore that requires his presence in court. When corrections officials attempt to transport him there so he can testify, he outwits them during a stopover in Baltimore and makes good his escape. This would be the stuff of a Hollywood movie -- or an urban legend -- except that it really happened. Raymond Taylor was serving three life terms at a maximum security facility in Cumberland for a triple shooting when he escaped from a downtown prison in Baltimore last Friday while en route to the Eastern Shore.

A New York man wanted in connection with an armed robbery in Oakland and scheduled to be featured Saturday on "America's Most Wanted" was arrested without incident Wednesday evening near Buckhannon, W.Va., according to the Garrett County Sheriff's Office. Gary Ross LaTray, 51, of Syracuse, was arrested by West Virginia State Police as he slept at the home of a woman he had been living with in Sago, located about seven miles south of Buckhannon. He was arrested after authorities received an anonymous tip on his whereabouts.

A woman wanted by South Carolina authorities and her 555-pound 14-year-old son were found by Baltimore County police Thursday afternoon washing their clothes in a Woodlawn laundry, county police said. Awaiting extradition to Greenville, S.C. and held at the Woodlawn precinct was Jerri Gray, 49, of Travelers Rest, a city about 10 miles north of Greenville, said Lt. Matt Weatherly of the Woodlawn Precinct. She was being sought on a warrant charging her with violating a child custody order.

Officials want to bring to Baltimore a fugitive surrender program that has proved effective in other cities, setting up a west-side church as a safe place where people being sought on outstanding warrants can turn themselves in and get a quick resolution of their cases. The program, Safe Surrender, has attracted thousands of fugitives to surrender in cities, including Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, and is geared toward those with nonviolent felonies, misdemeanors and traffic crimes.

Shortly before federal agents arrested 24 Latinos outside a Fells Point 7-Eleven in January 2007, the acting field office director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore told a deputy "to bring more bodies in," according to an internal ICE report. The roundup at the 7-Eleven occurred after the official told that deputy "to go back out to make more arrests, as the quantity of arrests that were made that morning was unacceptable," said the report. It appears to contradict previous statements by ICE officials that the agents were taking a drink break Jan. 23, 2007, when they happened to be approached by Latino laborers who thought they were contractors in need of workers.