Killer

Regarding the celebration in Baltimore for Barry Levinson's movie "Diner," ("Cast members, director celebrate 'Diner's 30 t h ," Dec. 12, I trust we will not be celebrating Mr. Levinson's "Homicide: Life on the Street. " Francis J. Gorman, Baltimore

Around the globe, the leading cause of death for children under age 5 is pneumonia, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . About 18 percent of the deaths are from the infection. That's 1.4 million kids out of 7.6 million who died around the world in 2010. “The numbers are staggering,” said Dr. Robert Black, senior author of the study, published in the May issue of the Lancet . Black, chair in the Department of International Health, said other leading causes of death were pre-term birth complications and diarrhea.

Anne Arundel County police say that on Tuesday, Arthur Tyler Felton used a box cutter to steal a cell phone and an MP3 player from a Sears in the Annapolis Mall, then briefly carjacked a woman in the parking lot in a failed bid to escape. This is the same Arthur Tyler Felton who in 1991 fatally shot 6-year-old Tiffany Smith in the head during a gunfight with a rival in West Baltimore's Walbrook neighborhood. The shooting of the elementary school student shocked a city, sparked a campaign to rebuild streets lined with vacant rowhouses, focused police attention on gangs, guns and drugs, and prompted residents to create a memorial in the girl's honor.

Baltimore County police are making another plea for help in finding the killer of Joann "Jody" LeCornu, a 23-year-old Towson University student who was shot in the back near her car in a shopping center on York Road in 1996. Metro Crime Stoppers has upped an reward to more than $30,000 in the 15-year-old case. The student was killed about 3:40 a.m. March 2, 1996 in the back of the Drumcastle Shopping Center, and managed to drive across the street to what was then York Road Plaza, where she died.

The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports: Dante Parrish, a convicted killer who was freed from prison 20 years early with the help of the Innocence Project, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for brutally murdering a 15-year-old Baltimore boy in 2009, less than a year after his premature release. The brutal killing of Jason Mattison Jr., whose troubled life as a gay teenager drove him from house to house, only to take refuge in the very place he'd be killed as his heroin-laden aunt passed out, left the judge with a loss of words.

I HAVE JUST returned from nine days on the beach at Ocean City, and have the healthy glow and ruddiness of skin which signals initial-stage melanoma to prove it.Look, tanning is a problem for those of us with that kind of waxy, semi-translucent northern European skin.So before hitting the beach I slather on the sunscreen -- thick, greasy stuff with a Sun Protection Factor so high you wouldn't pink up at ground zero of a nuclear blast.Then I sit on the beach -- oh, yes, that's a sight -- and read my newspapers and books, and within an hour I look like I've been napping inside a blast furnace.

"The Widow Killer," by Pavel Kohout. New York: St. Martin's Press. 400 pages. $24.95. Every publisher claims that the serial-killer thriller they're about to release will detonate in the reader's mind the way Thomas Harris' "Silence of the Lambs" did, but there is no living writer who can duplicate the elegant, single-minded psychological surgery that Harris inflicts on his audience.And every publisher tries to pass off the latest hybrid of serial-killer and historical novel as a commercial juggernaut like Caleb Carr's "The Alienist" - not too scary, not too James Michener.

There are far too many punks in this city.So far this year, there have been 269 murders in this dark, dark city of ours and each murder has been sadder than the last.One of the saddest occurred Sunday night when a man with a gun shot and killed a teen-ager during an attempted robbery in East Baltimore.Police say Charles Feaster, 17, was murdered because he refused to surrender his leather Chicago Bulls team jacket to some crook who had waylaid him in an alley.And if nobody else will say it, I will: The killer is a punk.

Ohio gas station manager Jo Lynne Gates couldn't get over her shock yesterday after a trusted employee -- a man who had lived with her family, gone bike riding with her teen-age son and played with her 3-year-old daughter -- was identified as an escaped Maryland killer."

Health officials in India believe they have brought under control an outbreak of plague that began last month in the western city of Surat. Within days it had spread from one coast to the other.With modern medicines and sanitary methods, India appears to have been able to limit the loss of life. But already scores of people have died and hundreds have contracted the deadly disease.Throughout history plague has been one of the major killers of mankind, attacking in devastating epidemics that brought death and terror to millions.

From The Aegis dated May 7, 1987: Accused cop killer Frank Green was transferred from the Harford County Detention Center 25 years ago this week to the state prison system. Green's lawyer said Green's life and health were at risk in the county jail because a county sheriff's deputy was one of the people wounded during the "incident" in September in which a Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer was shot and killed. Deputies staff the jail. Others called the "incident" involving Green more of a rampage.

When do I put down grub killer in the spring? Spring grubs are big, but they are barely eating now and not damaging your lawn. Don't waste your money on these grubs. Also, applying grub killer in spring sickens wasps that are predators of grubs. You've probably seen these beneficial wasps hovering over your lawn, looking for grubs to attack. Natural controls usually keep grub populations under control. A few grubs are normal and keep the predators around. Rarely is lawn damage caused by grubs.

Dante Parrish, a convicted killer freed from prison with the help of the Innocence Project in a 1999 murder, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for murdering a 15-year-old Baltimore boy less than a year after his release. Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard quoted an old Scottish prayer when handing down the sentence, which included a second life term for attempting to sexually assault Jason Mattison Jr. before suffocating the teen with a pillowcase, slashing his throat and stuffing him in a bedroom closet in November 2009.

The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports: Dante Parrish, a convicted killer who was freed from prison 20 years early with the help of the Innocence Project, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday for brutally murdering a 15-year-old Baltimore boy in 2009, less than a year after his premature release. The brutal killing of Jason Mattison Jr., whose troubled life as a gay teenager drove him from house to house, only to take refuge in the very place he'd be killed as his heroin-laden aunt passed out, left the judge with a loss of words.

My brackets went up in flames this weekend -- like a raging oil refinery fire, if you want the truth. So for me, there is no hope of any respectable showing in the modest NCAA men's basketball tournament pool in which I compete.  ( Compete ?! Ha! That's a laugh!) Yes, it is. I picked more losers than all the Kardashian boyfriends combined. I had Missouri in the Final Four. Vanderbilt in the Elite Eight. Duke in the Sweet Sixteen. I could go on with the losers, but what's the point?

Someone fatally shot Terrence Joyner Sunday as he was walking with 15-year-old Donye Thompson through a Northeast Baltimore gas station parking lot. Police know this much - they and have it on tape. But while police don't know the assailant who killed Joyner, 42, they recognized Thompson and have charged him with attempting to kill an unknown person. He was seen on the video tape shooting back at the assailant, according to police. Detectives who work the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood where the shooting occurred have had “numerous, in excess of 15, encounters over the past four months” with Thompson, according to charging documents.

GOT any idea what is the biggest killer of children in the world today? It is not AIDS. Nor is it whooping cough or typhus. Accidents are not the culprit, either.It is a medical problem that is almost never mentioned in polite company -- diarrhea.Sixty thousand kids die every day from this ailment. Five million babies and young children will die this year as a result of dehydration caused by diarrhea.What you and I know about diarrhea is almost entirely a function of the tidal wave of commercials on TV and radio aimed at getting us to buy stuff at the drugstore to treat what the ads often tactfully call "indigestion" or "upset stomach."

Less than a year ago, a beautiful and wonderful citizen by all accounts, Aysha Ring, was viciously murdered by David Briggs - stabbed to death while standing in line at a convenience store. The perpetrator has been found not criminally responsible and is committed to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup. He will serve no jail time and will be re-evaluated in a year for possible release, although prosecutor S. Ann Brobst told this writer that her office will ensure that does not occur.

It appears that the governor of Maryland, a former prosecutor and Baltimore mayor who built his political career on zero-tolerance crime policies, might finally give birth to a conscience in the matter of Mark Farley Grant - an inmate who went to prison 28 years ago for a crime he most likely didn't commit. It's one thing to be tough on crime, another to be just and fair. In the matter of Farley Grant, the otherwise ambitious governor of Maryland has come late to the latter ... maybe.

From the Baltimore Sun's Jill Rosen: Ethan Phillip Weibman who plead guilty last fall to animal abuse in the death of one cat and the beating of another was sentenced Wednesday to 90 days in prison. After District Judge Charles A. Chiapparelli's ruling, officers immediately took the 20-year-old, a short-time Baltimore resident originally from a wealthy hamlet in Westchester County, N.Y., into custody, as his mother shrieked in protest. “It's not just a crime, it's a person I'm sentencing,” Chiapparelli said.