Homicide

A Westminster infant who died from shaken baby syndrome in October will likely be classified as a homicide victim, the only homicide in Carroll County in 2006, state police said yesterday. The 3-month-old boy, Rylee J. Emge, died two days after sustaining severe injuries Oct. 13, according to court documents. After an investigation, the baby's father, Ryan J. Emge, 19, was indicted Dec. 8 on six counts of child abuse and assault in connection with the death. Emge is accused of assaulting his son in their Westminster apartment in the 500 block of Lacosta Circle.

In politics, candidates take campaign money wherever they find it, which is what brought Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to a large mansion in Clarksville last week for a small soiree with a group of businesspeople. Dixon said she needs about $2 million to spend on Baltimore's Sept. 11 Democratic primary election. So C. Vernon Gray, a former Howard County councilman and current human rights administrator, arranged the event at the home of A. Nayab Siddiqui and Dr. Janet Siddiqui. Among the candidates Dixon will face in the primary are City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. and Del. Jill P. Carter.

Baltimore homicide detectives are investigating two Christmas Eve slayings that occurred in Northwest Baltimore and one that was reported yesterday in East Baltimore, according to city police. The latest homicide occurred shortly after noon yesterday in the 1700 block of N. Dallas St., where police found the victim bleeding from multiple bullet wounds. The man, whose identity has been withheld until his relatives are notified, died a short time later at Johns Hopkins Hospital. About 1:45 a.m. Christmas Eve, police found a man lying in the 6600 block of Vincent Lane, suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.

A man was chased and fatally shot outside his West Baltimore rowhouse early yesterday, and police said they were seeking two men in the attack. The shooting occurred about 2:15 a.m. in the 1700 block of W. Baltimore St. Police said two men approached Samuel Epps, 30, and chased and shot him several times. He collapsed on a sidewalk, and paramedics took him to Maryland Shock Trauma Center where he was pronounced dead shortly before 3 a.m. A police spokeswoman said the victim had been on probation for drug violations.

Moments after Charles R. Erdman's old Ford pickup truck had been struck by a sport utility vehicle on Erdman Avenue in East Baltimore, he stepped out to talk to the driver. Standing in front of the auto parts shop where he worked, all Erdman wanted was the man's insurance information, police said. But the driver of the green Ford Explorer refused - police said the vehicle had a stolen license plate - and hopped back into the SUV and accelerated. He drove into the 65-year-old man, whose head and arms hit the top of the truck's hood.

Three men were shot to death, and a woman suffered gunshot wounds in separate incidents in Baltimore on Friday night and yesterday, city police reported. Two of the men were killed in East Baltimore, while the nature of the third death is being investigated. The latest shootings bring Baltimore's homicide total to 105 this year, nine more than at this time last year, city police spokesman Matt Jablow said. An officer on patrol found the body of a 29-year-old man in the 2200 block of Robb St. about 1 a.m. yesterday in the East Baltimore-Midway neighborhood, east of Greenmount Avenue, said city police spokeswoman Nicole Monroe.

PASADENA -- In a Sun interview last week, Tom Fontana asked us to think of Friday's episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" as the first day of the rest of the season for the NBC drama.He said he thought "Shades of Gray" was one of the best episodes of the year, and viewers seemed to agree with the executive producer. The audience of 18- to 49-year-olds, NBC's key demographic, was up 36 percent from the average audience of young adults for the show."Homicide" was undoubtedly helped by the blockbuster debut of the family drama "Providence," which drew the largest audience of any new drama on network television this year.

The death of a 21-year-old Laurel man who was found on his living room floor Friday evening is being investigated as a homicide, Laurel police said yesterday.Ryan Odell Mance, 21, of the 1400 block of Chapacove Court was unresponsive when he was discovered by his mother about 5: 30 p.m. Police said someone entered the home, assaulted Mance and took his 1993 mauve GEO Prism.Mance was pronounced dead at the scene from blunt force trauma to the head. Autopsy results reportedly will not be available for several days.

The big four broadcast networks were saying all the right things yesterday in response to NAACP President Kweisi Mfume's threat to sue them over the fact that, of the 26 new series set to debut this fall, not one has a leading character who is African-American.If you closed your eyes and forgot everything you knew about the history of the networks and how they have handled such images, you might even believe ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox were really going to start offering more diverse programming.

After a blessing by Deacon Lynwood Wimbish of Wilson Park Christian Community Church, the bus carting 50 community leaders left the old Hampden headquarters at seven minutes after 7. Spirits were high as a cowbell clanged to call for silence.The host of the Wednesday-night whistle-stop tour of Baltimore's Northern District, police Maj. Robert Biemiller made it clear the spring-night spin was not just for fun. "What are we collectively going to do to get the job done?" he asked.Since crime can cross boundaries, the idea was to take people beyond their neighborhoods to show how the district's parts fit together.

Ex-UM researcher whose fiancee died is indicted A Baltimore grand jury indicted a former University of Maryland School of Medicine researcher Monday on 14 drug-related counts. The most serious charges against Clinton B. McCracken, 32, include possessing with intent to distribute marijuana and two prescription narcotics. McCracken was charged by police after the Sept. 27 death of his 29-year-old fiancee, Carrie John, a fellow doctoral lab researcher at Maryland. McCracken told police she injected herself at their Ridgely's Delight rowhouse with a liquid containing the narcotic buprenorphine and went into respiratory distress, court documents said.

Roger Nolan said he would tell me about his life and that he would "start from the beginning." He began with 1968, when he was 29 years old and had just graduated from Baltimore's police academy. He didn't, until prodded later, volunteer information about being a Marine (he served in Vietnam), or about his wife (his closest colleagues have never met her), or about his son (who followed him onto the city force), or about policing the streets he grew up on, or even about his dedication to the Boy Scouts.

Bridge repairs cause U.S. 40 traffic detour Westbound traffic on U.S. 40 will be diverted off the Susquehanna River bridge several nights next week for deck repairs, the Maryland Transportation Authority announced. Depending on weather conditions, the westbound lane of the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge will close Monday through Thursday at 8 p.m., reopening at 5 a.m. the next day. Traffic will be detoured onto Interstate 95 as crews install and paint the new deck of the nearly 70-year-old bridge.

A man who had been charged with dousing his 85-year-old grandmother with alcohol and setting her on fire in an argument over money in March is now being charged with first-degree murder, three months after the woman died at a hospital, a Baltimore police spokesman said. Tyron Markit Mason, 29, of the 2800 block of Frederick Ave., had been charged with attempted murder. Ethel Henderson died June 17 in the burn unit of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The attack occurred about 5:20 p.m. on March 8, when police said Mason went to Henderson's home on Poplar Grove Street, demanded money and then set her on fire.

Reducing Baltimore's homicide rate will take more than just getting illegal guns off the streets and arresting the most violent offenders. It will also require putting more resources into apprehending the illegal-gun dealers who provide the weapons that fuel the city's homicide epidemic. That's the conclusion to be drawn from Sun reporter Peter Hermann's perplexing report last week that the steady decline in nonfatal shootings in Baltimore over the last 12 years has not been matched by a comparable drop in gun fatalities.

The death this year of a Baltimore man who was shot and paralyzed more than 20 years ago has been added to this year's homicide tally, after the state medical examiner determined that he died from medical complications stemming from the shooting. Michael A. Chase was 26 years old on Aug. 20, 1988, when he was shot in the neck as he walked in the 1500 block of Hopewell Court. He became a paraplegic and died May 19 of this year, at age 47. In a twist, police say a suspect in the shooting died in 2004.

They were two elderly gentlemen living out their days at Harmony Hall, an assisted-living facility in Columbia. James W. Brown and Earl Lafayette Wilder didn't know each other, according to an official at the facility, and might not have had any contact until Aug. 14. Now, Brown, 91, is dead and Wilder, 87, has been charged with killing him that afternoon in an incident outside the home where both men lived. It was Howard County's first homicide of the year. Joseph LaVerghetta, the general counsel for Harmony Hall's owner, said that the details of what triggered the incident remain unclear.

A man in his 30s died after he was shot several times early Thursday two blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, police said, one of two fatal overnight shootings in the city as violence continues to surge in Baltimore after a recent lull. Police also made two homicide arrests in separate cases, including a 15-year-old who turned himself in, as detectives continue to close cases at a higher clip than last year. The victim of the downtown shooting, Milton Stepney Sr., 32, was shot about 2:40 a.m. at Eutaw and Lombard streets after he got into an argument with a man at a carryout restaurant and came at the man with a tire iron, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman.

A man was found shot to death Friday in West Baltimore, the second early-morning slaying in the Walbrook neighborhood in less than three weeks, according to police. About 6:35 a.m., police found the unidentified man lying near a car in the 2300 block of N. Rosedale St., police said. Homicide detectives were notified within minutes as police began an investigation into the slaying. An alley in the same neighborhood was the scene of a homicide April 21. On that day, 24-year-old Qonta Waddell - who was on parole - was kidnapped in the presence of his mother, hogtied by his assailants and then shot to death in an alley in the 3100 block of Windsor Ave. He was killed two blocks from Friday's homicide scene.

A 48-year-old Northeast Baltimore man was ordered held without bond Thursday after being charged with first-degree murder in the death of a 53-year-old man. The victim was found dead Saturday of injuries he suffered after the two men got into a fight, according to court records. Detective Gordon Carew wrote in charging documents that Vincent "Vinny" Cala repeatedly hit Frank Swiston in the head with his hands, causing internal bleeding. Swiston bled internally over several hours and was found dead on a sofa in his home in the 2800 block of Erdman Ave. Cala and Swiston shared an address, though their relationship, if any, was not clear.