Kenneth Lee

On December 11, 2008, KENNETH LEE WATSON, beloved husband of Barbara A. Watson (nee Douglass), loving father of Kimberly Tulp and her husband Steven and Jaimie Watson, dear brother of Scott and Gerald Scala, loving grandfather of Ashlee Dempsey and Sydney Tulp. Friends may call at the family owned Ruck Towson Funeral Home, Inc., 1050 York Rd (beltway exit 26A) Monday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M., where a Prayer Service will be held Tuesday at 1 P.M. Interment Highview Memorial Gardens.

On December 11, 2008, KENNETH LEE WATSON, beloved husband of Barbara A. Watson (nee Douglass), loving father of Kimberly Tulp and her husband Steven and Jaimie Watson, dear brother of Scott and Gerald Scala, loving grandfather of Ashlee Dempsey and Sydney Tulp. Friends may call at the family owned Ruck Towson Funeral Home, Inc., 1050 York Rd (beltway exit 26A) Monday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M., where a Prayer Service will be held Tuesday at 1 P.M. Interment Highview Memorial Gardens.

HE'S DANCED and sung in a rock band. He's taught puppets to dance in the Broadway musical Avenue Q. Now Kenneth Lee Roberson will bring a touch of the tropics to Baltimore when he directs and choreographs the West Indian-flavored Once on This Island at Center Stage from Dec. 16-Jan. 22. The Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical is adapted from Rosa Guy's novel, My Love, My Love, which is in turn adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. "The magic is in the storytelling, and it's in the movement," Roberson says.

HE'S DANCED and sung in a rock band. He's taught puppets to dance in the Broadway musical Avenue Q. Now Kenneth Lee Roberson will bring a touch of the tropics to Baltimore when he directs and choreographs the West Indian-flavored Once on This Island at Center Stage from Dec. 16-Jan. 22. The Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical is adapted from Rosa Guy's novel, My Love, My Love, which is in turn adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. "The magic is in the storytelling, and it's in the movement," Roberson says.

An 18-month federal probe into one of Baltimore's most racially sensitive homicide cases ended yesterday when prosecutors decided not to pursue a civil rights indictment against an African-American man acquitted of killing Korean-American student Joel J. Lee.The decision disappointed Lee's father and Asian-American leaders, who were outraged in 1995 when a nearly all-black jury acquitted Davon Neverdon. Neverdon was found not guilty despite testimony from four witnesses who said they saw him shoot Lee in the face during a $20 mugging in Northeast Baltimore.

Kenneth Lee Whittington, 67, construction sales engineer Kenneth Lee Whittington, a retired construction sales engineer, died of cancer Saturday at his Towson home. He was 67. Mr. Whittington retired in 1996 from his job as a construction sales engineer with General Electric Co. He joined the company in 1956 as a power engineer in the switch gear department in Southwest Philadelphia and moved to Baltimore in 1959. Born in Crisfield, where he attended public schools, Mr. Whittington graduated from the University of Delaware in 1956 with a degree in electrical engineering.

An eyewitness to what has been described as one of Baltimore's most callous murders testified yesterday that one of his friends fatally shot Towson State University student Joel Lee in the face for a wallet containing $20.The slaying of Mr. Lee epitomized the ruthlessness of city street thugs in a year that went on to become Baltimore's worst-ever for homicide.As Mr. Lee's parents sat in the front of the courtroom with tears in their eyes, Edward Knox Jr. claimed that Davon Neverdon, 20, was the man who killed the student as he wandered lost outside a northeast Baltimore apartment complex.

Dear Camille Cosby:Please come to Baltimore. You need, desperately, to talk to a man named Kenneth Lee.According to the July 8 USA Today, you believe "America taught our son's killer to hate African-Americans." You then launched into a litany of America's "institutional" white racism sins: the images of holy people as white, the definition of black as evil, the inclusion of the movie "Birth of a Nation" in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 American films.In what must have been a real stretch, you even criticized U.S. currency as part of the problem.

We find ways anew to kill Kenneth Lee.In September of 1993, Lee's oldest son, Joel Lee, was killed during a robbery in Northeast Baltimore. The elder Lee -- a Korean immigrant -- probably died a little that day, as all relatives and friends of homicide victims do.Baltimore police arrested and charged Davon Neverdon in the slaying. In July of 1995, Neverdon was tried in Baltimore Circuit Court in Joel Lee's slaying. A predominantly black jury acquitted Neverdon, who is also black, eliciting charges of racial bias from Kenneth Lee and others.

Four teen-agers were being sought yesterday in the robbery and murder of a Towson State University student, who was accosted in Northeast Baltimore as he walked to a friend's house to borrow a book.Joel J. Lee, 21, a computer science major who was to have started his senior year Tuesday, apparently resisted the youths and one of them shot him just below the right eye with a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, police said."He had been seen surrounded by four teen-agers, two of whom had on camouflage attire," said Agent Doug Price, a city police spokesman.

Kenneth Lee Whittington, 67, construction sales engineer Kenneth Lee Whittington, a retired construction sales engineer, died of cancer Saturday at his Towson home. He was 67. Mr. Whittington retired in 1996 from his job as a construction sales engineer with General Electric Co. He joined the company in 1956 as a power engineer in the switch gear department in Southwest Philadelphia and moved to Baltimore in 1959. Born in Crisfield, where he attended public schools, Mr. Whittington graduated from the University of Delaware in 1956 with a degree in electrical engineering.

Dear Camille Cosby:Please come to Baltimore. You need, desperately, to talk to a man named Kenneth Lee.According to the July 8 USA Today, you believe "America taught our son's killer to hate African-Americans." You then launched into a litany of America's "institutional" white racism sins: the images of holy people as white, the definition of black as evil, the inclusion of the movie "Birth of a Nation" in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 American films.In what must have been a real stretch, you even criticized U.S. currency as part of the problem.

Reacting partly to concerns surrounding the investigation of a Korean-American student slain four years ago, U.S. Civil Rights Commission advisers are planning a study to determine whether Korean-Americans face racial discrimination in Baltimore.The commission's Maryland Advisory Committee, made up of volunteers who have scheduled a hearing on the issue Sept. 29, will be asking for public comments "relating to administration of justice as it applies to Korean Americans," said committee chairman Chester Wickwire.

Two hundred miles from Baltimore, a Brooklyn, N.Y., jury last week convicted two men of violating the civil rights of a Hasidic Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum, who was stabbed to death during the 1991 Crown Heights race riots. In the modern vernacular, sometimes they take the word murder and substitute the term hate crime in the search for justice.Kenneth Lee heard the news out of Brooklyn, and it slashed at the wound that never heals. How is there such a verdict in New York, he wondered, and not in Baltimore, where his son, Joel Lee, 21, was murdered in front of witnesses two years ago and the courts and the prosecutors let his killer slip away?

We find ways anew to kill Kenneth Lee.In September of 1993, Lee's oldest son, Joel Lee, was killed during a robbery in Northeast Baltimore. The elder Lee -- a Korean immigrant -- probably died a little that day, as all relatives and friends of homicide victims do.Baltimore police arrested and charged Davon Neverdon in the slaying. In July of 1995, Neverdon was tried in Baltimore Circuit Court in Joel Lee's slaying. A predominantly black jury acquitted Neverdon, who is also black, eliciting charges of racial bias from Kenneth Lee and others.

An 18-month federal probe into one of Baltimore's most racially sensitive homicide cases ended yesterday when prosecutors decided not to pursue a civil rights indictment against an African-American man acquitted of killing Korean-American student Joel J. Lee.The decision disappointed Lee's father and Asian-American leaders, who were outraged in 1995 when a nearly all-black jury acquitted Davon Neverdon. Neverdon was found not guilty despite testimony from four witnesses who said they saw him shoot Lee in the face during a $20 mugging in Northeast Baltimore.

Reacting partly to concerns surrounding the investigation of a Korean-American student slain four years ago, U.S. Civil Rights Commission advisers are planning a study to determine whether Korean-Americans face racial discrimination in Baltimore.The commission's Maryland Advisory Committee, made up of volunteers who have scheduled a hearing on the issue Sept. 29, will be asking for public comments "relating to administration of justice as it applies to Korean Americans," said committee chairman Chester Wickwire.

Two hundred miles from Baltimore, a Brooklyn, N.Y., jury last week convicted two men of violating the civil rights of a Hasidic Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum, who was stabbed to death during the 1991 Crown Heights race riots. In the modern vernacular, sometimes they take the word murder and substitute the term hate crime in the search for justice.Kenneth Lee heard the news out of Brooklyn, and it slashed at the wound that never heals. How is there such a verdict in New York, he wondered, and not in Baltimore, where his son, Joel Lee, 21, was murdered in front of witnesses two years ago and the courts and the prosecutors let his killer slip away?

Word of O. J. Simpson's acquittal set off an emotional wave in the Baltimore area yesterday, prompting rejoicing by those who believe the football idol was framed and angry disbelief from others who felt the judicial system let a killer go free.Local politicians sought to calm tensions, and Marylanders tried to make sense of a trial that captivated America and culminated in a quickly reached verdict of not guilty."I don't know of any one thing that would have swayed the jury for an acquittal -- but I bet you we'll find out from the jury's book and movie deals," said Geoffrey R. Garinther, a former assistant U.S. attorney who now works for the law firm of Venable, Baetjer and Howard.

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the Joel J. Lee case -- which created a racially charged furor when the man accused of killing the Korean-American was acquitted last month -- to see if it may merit a U.S. civil rights investigation.Prosecutors have obtained witness statements and grand jury transcripts of the Baltimore Circuit Court trial and have met with the victim's father, Kenneth Lee, as part of their preliminary review of the case, U.S. Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia said yesterday."I met with Mr. Lee for a lengthy period of time . . . to talk about his concerns.