Glen Arm

Two men were seriously burned at a northeast Baltimore County party when someone sprayed a form of fuel on a bonfire, according to the Baltimore County Fire Department. Fire investigators said a group of people were standing around a fire pit in a driveway of a home in the 11500 block of Wallace Drive at about 3:15 a.m. Sunday when the flames started to die down. Witnesses later told police that Nicholas Hamel, 20, tried to reignite the fire with nitro fuel, which is used to power remote control cars.

Wendy Jill Spector, a former assistant activities director at a retirement community and an accomplished horsewoman, died Sept. 20 of cancer at her Glen Arm farm. She was 54. Wendy Jill Hershfield, the daughter of an electrical engineer and a Baltimore County public schools guidance counselor, was born in Baltimore and raised in Glen Arm. After graduating from Perry Hall High School in 1973, she earned a bachelor's degree in 1977 from Goucher College. She taught French at the Garrison Forest School from 1977 to 1979, and for the next two years held teaching assignments in Cincinnati public schools and was an admissions counselor at Salem College in West Virginia.

I was very excited when I read your article about early voting and especially the ability to access absentee ballots on-line and send them in ("Vote early, not often," Editorial, Aug. 29). I can get out to vote (I work for the Baltimore County Public Schools and we are closed on election day) but I prefer not to. I am 61 years old and have voted in every election since I was old enough. but I would love to be able to vote from my home. I attempted to access the on-line ballot and it won't pull up. I am fairly computer knowledgeable and it frustrates me so I can only imagine how this is going to put other people off and limit the number folks who use the service.

Irvin Conrad Tillman Sr., a retired businessman and thoroughbred horse breeder, died Aug. 1 of heart failure at Wellington Regional Medical Center in Wellington, Fla. The former Towson resident was 91. Mr. Tillman, the son of a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad locomotive engineer and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on 40th Street in Hampden. He was a 1937 graduate of Forest Park High School and earned a bachelor's degree in 1941 in electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Separate fires in Baltimore City and County left five people injured on Saturday, including an elderly couple forced from their burning 6 t h -floor apartment in the Strathmore Towers complex on Park Heights Avenue. The elderly woman suffered burns and was taken to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center for treatment. Her husband was treated at the scene for mild smoke inhalaton. Batallion Chief Kevin Cartwright, a city Fire Department spokesman, described the injures to both victims as minor.

Calmly, and in a clear if subdued voice, a 60-year-old murder defendant told a jury Tuesday that she could not fathom how her .38-caliber revolver ended up in her grasp on the morning her husband was killed, and said she "never heard the gun." "I saw myself like I was in a movie," Mary C. Koontz said to the Baltimore County Circuit Court jury that has been hearing the case against her since last Wednesday. She acknowledged buying and learning to use the gun, and checking it in with her luggage on flights to Baltimore from her condominium in Florida, where she was living after her marriage had dissolved.

The trial of a 60-year-old Glen Arm woman accused of killing her husband continued in Baltimore County Circuit Court Thursday, with further testimony from their 17-year-old daughter. Defense attorney Richard M. Karceski got an earful from Kelsey Koontz, a Notre Dame Preparatory School graduate and the daughter of defendant Mary C. Koontz. Kelsey Koontz grew increasingly exasperated with the attorney's efforts to poke holes in her testimony. Karceski is trying to convince the jury that his client is mentally ill and therefore not responsible for her actions and that Kelsey and her father, Ronald G. Koontz, had treated the defendant with such disregard that they contributed to the "state of mind" that led to the shootings on June 19, 2009.

A Glen Arm woman accused of shooting her estranged husband to death is mentally ill, her attorney told a jury this morning, going so far as to compare Mary C. Koontz, 60, to John Hinckley Jr. — the man who shot former President Ronald Reagan — during opening arguments. Koontz, whose trial began today, faces seven charges, including first-degree murder and first-degree assault. The prosecution intends to seek a sentence of life in prison without parole. Ronald G. Koontz, a former teacher and wrestling coach at Towson High School who later became an administrator in the Baltimore County school system, was killed June 19, 2009, three days before father's day. Prosecutor Robin S. Coffin told the jury that Mary Koontz flew from Florida where she was living, woke up before 6 a.m. in the Towson hotel where she was staying, took the gun and ammunition she had earlier purchased and went to Glen Arm. There, Koontz parked at an adjoining property and snuck through the woods.

For years, the Koontz family — Ron, Mary and their daughter, Kelsey — was a "pretty close-knit" group. Mary Koontz made "awesome sandwiches" for her husband and welcomed her daughter's friends into their "quiet suburban home," Kelsey, now 17, said in court Wednesday. "I could see the love between my parents," Kelsey Koontz said. "My childhood was fine. It was awesome." But in a few short years, she went on, the family's harmony dissolved into mistrust and recriminations, her parents separated, and Mary Koontz went to live in Florida.