Harford County

Robert C. Chance, a pioneering Harford County ecologist and retired high school teacher, received a two-year suspended sentence and was placed on 18 months of supervised probation yesterday for growing marijuana and possessing psychedelic mushrooms last year on his Darlington farm. "This is a 62-year-old man who showed poor judgment," said Baltimore County Circuit Judge John G. Turnbull II as he announced the ruling. "I certainly don't think he's a threat to the community. If anything, he is a threat to himself."

A Harford County judge heard arguments Monday on whether a lawsuit over a vapor leak at an Exxon gas station in Fallston should proceed as a class-action case. The Peter G. Angelos law firm filed the lawsuit as a class action on behalf of about 150 families and businesses whose wells were contaminated by the gasoline additive MTBE. Lawyers for Exxon Mobil Corp. and the operator of the station contended that the plaintiffs should be required to file individual lawsuits. In arguing for class-action status, plaintiffs' lawyers said their clients shared a common interest in the leak, which residents learned about in 2004.

A Harford County middle school teacher was arrested yesterday, accused of using the Internet to solicit sex from a 15-year-old boy, state police said. Officers from the state police computer crimes unit charged Jonathan S. Dick, 43, of Bel Air, a physical education teacher at Fallston Middle School, with two counts of solicitation of a minor. Police said they began an investigation of Dick, who is also a boys lacrosse coach at Fallston High School, in February after receiving complaints from the parents of a Prince George's County boy. The parents discovered "disturbing sexual text messages" between the boy and Dick, according to a police statement.

Chad Shrodes got his wish when he was elected to the Harford County Council, but it cost him his job. While the Republican boasted that his experience as a county planner would help him as a councilman, conflict of interest rules prohibited him from holding both positions. So when he was sworn in at the beginning of the year as an elected official, he became temporarily unemployed. For the past three months, Shrodes has used the free time to delve into concerns lodged by residents in his district, which stretches from Jarrettsville to Dublin.

The parents of a 7-week-old infant and another man were indicted by a Harford County grand jury in the April death of the baby, who had been under the close watch of county social services, officials said yesterday. Richard Mosely, 22, and Giovanna Mosely, 26, of Abingdon have been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in death, and second-degree child abuse nearly five months after their son, Seth, was found unresponsive in the family's Abingdon apartment on April 10. Daniel Reilly, 20, of Bel Air, also was charged.

Howard County police increased patrols in the neighborhood around Atholton High School in Columbia yesterday after a 15-year-old girl reported that a man followed her Thursday as she walked home from the school. The man tried to get her attention by whispering to her from his car in the area of Cedar Lane and Freetown Road about 2:30 p.m., police said. The man got out of the car and gestured for her to get in the back seat, police said. The girl continued walking to her house on a nearby street, and the man left, police said.

Rescue crews were working last night to reach two coal miners believed buried beneath 75 feet of rock and dirt from a collapsed wall of an open pit mine in Western Maryland, an emergency management official said. The first call about the collapse at the Tri-Star Job No. 3 mine near Barton came at 10:05 a.m. yesterday, according to Brian Miller, an Allegany County 911 dispatcher. "Basically, there are still two unaccounted-for employees that we believe are buried within the pile of debris, which is upwards of 75 feet tall," said Richard L. DeVore, Allegany County director of emergency services.

Nearly three years after he was sentenced to die for killing his girlfriend's young daughter, a Baltimore man's life was spared yesterday. A jury sentenced Jamaal K. Abeokuto, 27, to life in prison with no chance for parole in the kidnapping and stabbing death of his girlfriend's 8-year-old daughter. He had been sentenced to death in 2004 after being convicted of the crime, but Maryland's highest court reversed the sentence last year when four Court of Appeals judges voted, for two different reasons, to grant him a new sentencing hearing.

Ex-county man accused in sexual abuse of child A former Baltimore County man has been charged with sexually abusing a child in Baltimore and Harford counties, police said yesterday. Fabrice Snowden, 41, of the 600 block of Burlington Court in Edgewood is accused of sexually abusing a child from 1999 to December 2006, and the victim told detectives that the sexual abuse was videotaped, according to authorities. The victim also told detectives that Snowden sold pornographic videos to someone in India, police said.

Baltimore: Schools Delay closings vote, board is to be asked Baltimore school officials will ask city Board of Education members to delay for 30 days the planned vote on the closings of Thurgood Marshall and Hamilton middle schools at tonight's board meeting. School officials said yesterday at a meeting at the North Avenue headquarters that the proposed middle school closings will require more public hearings because of changes to their original proposal. Thurgood Marshall was originally scheduled to close in the summer of 2009, but the new proposal calls for the school to be shut down a year earlier.

On October 4, 2009, Donna G. Hinkle Services will be held at the family owned McComas Funeral Home, P.A., Abingdon, MD on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 10:00 A.M. Interment will be in Holly Hill Memorial Gardens, Baltimore, MD. Friends may call at the funeral home in Abingdon on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. Those who desire may contribute to the Humane Society of Harford County, 2208 Connelly Road, Fallston, MD 21047. Memory tributes may be sent to the family at mccomasfuneralhome.

Harford officials announced Monday that the county will provide the city of Aberdeen with the additional water needed to meet its development. The city is growing rapidly along with Aberdeen Proving Ground, which will add about 10,000 jobs in the next two years as a result of BRAC, the nationwide military expansion. The city will require more water to meet the demands of commercial and residential development associated with the Army post's expansion. The new contract will allow Aberdeen to draw as much as 600,000 gallons a day from the county water supply, with an option to increase that amount by another 300,000 gallons in the future.

Eugene "Euke" Todd, a former Harford County cattleman turned developer, died in his sleep Sept. 30 at his Bel Air home. He was 87. Born in Galax, Va., the son of farmers, Mr. Todd was a child when he moved with his family to Colorado Springs. "His father had tuberculosis and doctors advised that he move to the drier climate of Colorado. After he regained his health, he moved in the early 1930s to Pylesville," said a daughter, Cara T. Blount of Bel Air. Mr. Todd, who had attended Bel Air High School, helped his father manage several Harford County farms and hauled livestock to market from surrounding local farms as well as from farms in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Surrounded by lush green vines laden with clusters of grapes ripening in a Harford County vineyard, officials and vintners announced the creation of the Piedmont Wine Trail as Maryland's fourth pathway to fine wines. The trail meanders through scenic areas of northern Baltimore and Harford counties and, if experience from the popularity of other trail ventures proves true, could bring thousands of visitors annually to the eight sites, officials said. The trail will allow vintners to show off their vineyards, offer tastes and give guests insight into the intricacies of winemaking.

As soon as Maryland's Gang Prosecution Act went into effect in 2007, prosecutors in Harford County tested it, filing charges against a group that had stabbed and beaten a man. But when prosecutors couldn't show how the attack had furthered a criminal conspiracy, as required under the new law, the judge balked. They had to drop the gang charges and move forward with simple assault. "It's a very unworkable statute. ... Most prosecutors haven't really bothered to do anything with it," said Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly, who contends that the law is watered-down and useless.

Suddenly, on September 6, 2009, Karie Rebecca Dietz Visiting at the E.F. Lassahn Funeral Home, P.A., 11750 Belair Road (Kingsville) on Saturday 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 pm. Funeral services will be held at St. John's Episcopal Church on Sunday at 3:00 pm. Interment St. John's Episcopal Church Cemetery. Donations may be made to the Humane Society of Harford County, 2208 Connelly Road, Fallston, MD 21047.

President Barack Obama's plans to speak directly to the nation's students Tuesday have sparked a dispute among area parents and politicians, with some expressing concerns that the president could use the speech to promote his agenda - and others calling it a valuable classroom lesson. School systems have been inundated with phone calls this week from both sides. Most Baltimore-area districts are letting individual schools determine whether they will show the noon speech, which the White House says will call for students to take responsibility for their education.

Maryland's highest court heard arguments Thursday in a case that could decide how far responsibility for a fatal car crash extends. At issue is what it means to operate a vehicle, and whether that refers only to what a driver does behind the wheel or if it includes other actions - in this case, what a driver did after spilling more than 11/2 tons of gravel on a Harford County road. The case, the first time the top court is being asked the question, stems from the death of a 7-year-old boy whose mother's car skidded on the gravel and spun into an oncoming car. Lawyers for the attorney general's office are asking the Court of Appeals to rule that the driver who spilled the gravel is guilty of vehicular manslaughter because he should have marked the area to warn traffic or indicated a need for prompt cleanup.

The nonprofit group that promotes Baltimore living isn't just hoping that relocating BRAC workers will move to the city. It's busing them in for a weekend tour. Live Baltimore will pick up a busload of Fort Monmouth personnel and contractors in New Jersey and bring them to Baltimore Sept. 12 and 13, the first overnight stay the group has organized. Workers will go to the "Buying Into Baltimore" home-buying fair on the first day, which is open to anyone, and will get a BRAC-only tour the following day. Nearly 40 people have signed up. "We thought it would be a great way to show more of the city," said Anna Custer, executive director of Live Baltimore.

On August 23, 2009, SHYRL YOUMANS, beloved mother of Michael Youmans, cherished daughter of Frances Sclafani, sisters Karen Stuebing, Dorothy Sclafani and brother Dana Sclafani. A memorial mass will be celebrated at St.Stephen's Church, 8030 Bradshaw Rd, Bradshaw, MD on September 2nd at 1:00 P.M. In lieu of flowers please send donations to Hospice of Harford County, 520 Upper Chesapeake Dr., Bel Air, MD 21014