Gentry

On February 18, 2003, FLOYD L. "NICK" of Brooklyn Park. He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 69 years, Paulina Gentry (nee Gregor) and his son and daughter-in-law Ron and Stephanie Gentry. He is also survived by his loving and faithful granddaughter Suzanne, his grandson Stephen, his very special niece Lillian Pleickhardt and nephews Donald and William Curtiss. The family will receive friends at the family owned and operatedMcCULLY-POLYNIAK FUNERAL HOME, P.A., 237 E. Patapsco Ave. (Brooklyn)

It will probably remain a mystery why anyone at Franklin Square Hospital Center would yank straight the arms of an 81-year-old woman two years ago, ripping her biceps from the bone and breaking the elbows that had been locked in a bent position. That movement, according to medical reports, caused the woman to hemorrhage and die. But a lack of motive, Assistant State's Attorney James O. Gentry Jr. said in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday, should not keep a jury from finding nurse Ethel B. Barlow guilty of manslaughter.

A suspect who spent more than a year in jail awaiting trial on a charge of killing a man with an assault rifle was freed this week after authorities failed to locate the sole eyewitness. The case is the latest example of how reluctant or recanting witnesses foil criminal prosecutions in Baltimore. Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph P. McCurdy had granted the state's attorney's office four trial delays in the case of Damein T. Gentry, 22, of the 2000 block of Kennedy Ave. in East Baltimore.

A 48-year-old plumber was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison for his role in the 1978 murder of a Towson construction worker who was beaten, thrown from a railroad trestle and drowned in the Gunpowder Falls. John S. Derry of the 3300 block of Beech Ave. in Baltimore told Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II that he has spent the 24 years since Mark Schwandtner was killed trying to help people and working to support his family. "I have been a changed person," Derry said.

A 16-year-old youth who police say compiled a "hit list" of students and teachers at Eastern Technical High School will be tried as an adult on charges that he tried to shoot a student whose name was on the list. Baltimore County Circuit Judge Christian M. Kahl ruled yesterday that Emmanuel Seth Covington of the 100 block of Alberge Lane in Chase should be tried on two counts of attempted murder in a drive-by shooting near the home of one of the alleged targets. Assistant State's Attorney James O. Gentry Jr. told Kahl that Covington prepared a hit list of students and teachers at the Essex school last spring.

OLD PLANTATION CREEK, Va. -- It must have been a sight -- three stories of brick and mortar towering above the marshes and flat, sandy fields here where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic. In the mid-1670s, a time when even the well-to-do were scratching to make a stake in the Virginia Colony, wealthy planter and tobacco merchant John Custis II outdid his fellow gentry, building a home historians say was the "most magnificent in the Chesapeake" on an isolated spot near the southern tip of Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Police investigating the murder of Peter Makris at his Falls Road pizza shop found what they consider incriminating evidence in a bedroom above the restaurant hours after the killing last July, a Baltimore County jury was told yesterday. In a room used by Martin L. Hoffman, police found $1,700 cash in envelopes, two stacks of single dollar bills and a "wad" of $2,000 in twenties -- wrapped in the same type of rubber bands Makris used for the restaurant's cash, said Assistant State's Attorney James O. Gentry.

A 20-year-old woman pleaded guilty yesterday to being an accessory after the fact in the killing of a Falls Road pizza shop owner in July. Jennifer Hoffman admitted in Baltimore County Circuit Court that she waited outside Pepe's Pizza while her husband robbed the shop and killed 72-year-old Peter Makris. She could be sentenced to up to five years for her role in the crimes. Judge Robert N. Dugan agreed to postpone sentencing yesterday until Hoffman testifies against her brother-in-law, Martin Hoffman.

A heroin addict who lived out of his car has been convicted of murdering and robbing the 72-year-old owner of a Falls Road pizza restaurant in July. Michael J. Hoffman, 35, was found guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery in the fatal stabbing of Peter Makris, owner of Pepe's Pizza in the 6000 block of Falls Road, said Baltimore County Assistant States Attorney James O. Gentry Jr. Gentry said Hoffman was trying to get money to buy drugs. The prosecutor said the state estimated that $10,000 to $12,000 was taken from a locked box beneath the restaurant's cash register.

A former nurse at Franklin Square Hospital Center was arrested yesterday and charged with manslaughter in the case of an 81-year-old patient who died after her arms - which were permanently locked across her chest - were pried apart. The arrest follows an intensive investigation into what police and prosecutors say is one of the most bizarre homicides in recent Baltimore County history. The incident sparked a state investigation into procedures at Franklin Square. Police in Memphis, Tenn.