Halfway House

Just months before he was to be released from a Baltimore halfway house, Gregory Veale is accused of going on two weekend shooting sprees with a friend, killing one man and seriously injuring two others. Veale, 20, of the 3000 block of Presstman St. and lifelong friend George Smith, 27, of the 1200 block of N. Bond St. pleaded not guilty yesterday at their arraignment in Baltimore Circuit Court. The two men are charged with murder, attempted murder and handgun charges. At the time of the shootings, Veale was finishing up a prison sentence for armed robbery at Dismus House, a halfway facility in East Baltimore.

In an unusual meeting marked by technical and legislative delays, the Howard County Council postponed annual action last night on charts that control the pace of development around crowded county schools, approved a lease for a halfway house for drug abusers and killed or tabled several other controversial measures. The meeting began a half-hour late because of last-minute confusion over the school/development charts. Partial failure of the council's sound and cable television system also contributed to the delay.

WICHITA, Kan. -- A judge has ordered a Wichita man into a halfway house to lose weight because he blew his court-ordered diet.After a short hearing to determine whether Arthur Younkin had violated his probation by cheating on his diet, Sedgwick County District Judge Clark Owens offered the 500-pound man a choice on Tuesday: go to prison or go to the halfway house and stick to a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet.Mr. Younkin, upset by what he calls discrimination, reluctantly agreed to go into the Community Corrections residential program and try to lose weight.

Jim Bakker is getting out of prison tomorrow.More than 4 1/2 years after going in for bilking his PTL followers, the fallen TV evangelist is due to walk out of a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Ga., and check into a halfway house in Asheville, N.C.An official at the prison 65 miles southwest of Savannah -- 300 miles from the empire Bakker made famous in Fort Mill, S.C. -- confirmed the release date yesterday.Bakker, 53, wasn't due to get out until Sept. 2. The early release was approved by federal prison officials in Georgia.

Government documents accuse noted Maryland con woman Deborah Kolodner, the subject of a federal investigation into alleged real estate fraud, of asking a man to kill her probation officer in 1999. Kolodner is in jail awaiting a hearing to determine whether she will be sent back to prison for violating the terms of a 1998 mail fraud conviction. In the latest allegations against her, prosecutors say that Kolodner asked an unidentified man to kill Renata Ramsburg, a federal probation agent who had tracked and chronicled Kolodner's recent suspected activities.

Government documents accuse noted Maryland con woman Deborah Kolodner, the subject of a federal investigation into alleged real estate fraud, of asking a man to kill her probation officer in 1999. Kolodner is jailed awaiting a hearing to determine whether she will be returned to prison for violating the terms of a 1998 mail fraud conviction. In the latest allegations against her, prosecutors say that Kolodner asked an unidentified man to kill Renata Ramsburg, a federal probation agent who had tracked and chronicled Kolodner's recent suspected activities.

When Darrell Cornish walked away from a halfway house this week and held 11 people hostage in a Glen Burnie bank, he rekindled all the fears, suspicions and prejudices people commonly feel toward mental patients and the institutions designed to take care of them. This is the unfortunate consequence of his crime -- that he gave the NIMBYs of the world a reason to shout, "Not in my back yard!" the next time someone proposes a halfway house in their neighborhood.Yet how can you blame people for being afraid when someone like Mr. Cornish slips through the system unhealed?

The results of an autopsy on a woman's body found March 20 in Gwynns Falls Park in West Baltimore show that she was strangled, a police spokesman said. About 6 a.m. that day, police received a 911 call from someone who reported seeing a man dump what appeared to be a body onto the ground off the 3600 block of Winterbourne Road and then drive off in an unknown vehicle, said Agent Donny Moses, the spokesman. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene, and her body was sent to the medical examiner's office.

State officials celebrated Friday the official opening of Focus Point School, a residential program for severely disturbed adolescents, after the completion of the final phase of renovations of three buildings at Crownsville Hospital Center to house the school.Focus Point began accepting residents in June 1992, but delayed its ribbon-cutting ceremony and dedication a year, until the former superintendent's mansion could be turned into a halfway house, said Martin E. Salisbury, principal of the school.