Knife

An Anne Arundel County judge agreed yesterday to hear arguments on whether to release records concerning a homemade knife to lawyers for two inmates accused in last year's killing of a correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction. Investigators have said in written reports that they consider the knife to be potential evidence in the July 25, 2006, killing of David W. McGuinn, noting that the knife was initially found near where he was killed. The shank turned up missing for two days and reappeared tagged into evidence as having been taken from an inmate during a strip search, according to documents obtained by The Sun. Investigators said it would have been impossible for the inmate to have the 8 1/2 -inch knife.

Colleagues of slain Maryland Correctional Officer David W. McGuinn have done his memory a disservice. In trying to explain away the beating of an inmate, they may have seriously compromised an investigation into the officer's murder. Add to that the slipshod handling of a piece of evidence, and the prosecution's job of convicting his accused killers becomes exceedingly harder. That's no formula for justice. The aftermath of Officer McGuinn's July 25, 2006 death at the House of Correction in Jessup was a chaotic and dangerous affair, as reported by The Sun's Greg Garland.

Three men attacked a fellow inmate at the Maryland House of Correction Annex in Jessup yesterday, stabbing him eight times and puncturing his lung, prison officials said.The 25-year-old victim and 47 other inmates were outside a housing unit about 1: 50 p.m. during a recreation period when the attack occurred. Officers recovered a homemade knife.The inmate, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, was taken by MedEvac helicopter to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where he is listed in stable condition, said Dave Towers, a spokesman for the state Division of Correction.

The Maryland State Police are investigating the death of a Port Deposit man who was shot by troopers after the man's father called police to report an attempted suicide.Harry Blomquist Havens, 40, was pronounced dead late Wednesday night at his sister's home on Peacock Lane in Cecil County. He was shot once in the chest.State police said they received a call at 9: 18 p.m. from Havens' father, who reported a disturbance and attempted suicide at the home.Troopers from North East barracks and a Port Deposit police officer, who were warned that the man had a knife, found him hiding in the home, police said.

County police arrested a Gambrills man Sunday and charged him in the theft of knives and other merchandise from a knife shop in Annapolis.At 10: 50 a.m. Sunday, officers were called to a theft at the Chesapeake Knife and Tool Co. in Annapolis Mall, police said.Officers arrested Donald John West of the 2100 block of St. Heather Lane in Gambrills, who was identified as a former store employee. Police said he had taken 20 to 30 knives, several flashlights and other merchandise valued at about $6,714, police said.

A man in his late 30s with salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache was being sought by Howard County police yesterday as a suspect in the knifepoint robbery of an Ellicott City convenience store.The robber threatened an employee with a knife and demanded cash at the High's Dairy Store in the 9000 block of Frederick Road about 10: 05 p.m. Friday, then fled into the Dunloggin neighborhood with an undisclosed amount of money.Police said the man -- described as white, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall and wearing a mask -- may be the same person who has robbed several Carroll County stores recently.

A robber held up an Ellicott City convenience store Monday night and fled with an undetermined amount of cash, police said.The man, described as white, unshaven, in his late 20s and about 6 feet tall, entered the High's store in the 3000 block of Rogers Ave. and approached a clerk, police said.The man brandished a knife and demanded cash before fleeing, police said. No one was injured.Pub Date: 4/02/98

Joan T. Maiolo's cries for help and her labored, wheezing breaths filled an Anne Arundel County courtroom yesterday on opening day of the trial of the Caroline County man charged with murdering her.The grandmother and mother of five essentially became a state witness as Assistant State's Attorney Laura S. Kiessling played a compact disc recording of Maiolo's call to a 911 operator about 1: 30 a.m. July 6.Reginald Cooper, 20, of the 11500 block of Ridgely Road...

"Three Uses of the Knife: On Nature and Purpose of Drama," by David Mamet. Columbia University Press. 87 pages. $19.95. Why do certain plays get under some people's skin, while others leave them cold? What separates the great movie from the merely good?When something happens to me, why does the experience feel more complete once it's recounted to a friend (ideally over a bottle of good red wine)?The answer - and it turns out that all three questions have the same one - is provided with penetrating intelligence, wit and clarity by the playwright David Mamet in "Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama," a collection of three interrelated essays in which he explains how dramatic structure operates in art and daily life.

A 20-year-old man who knifed a Severn woman to death to experience the crime was sentenced yesterday to life in prison without parole, plus 20 years.The General Assembly created the no-parole provision "for this kind of case," Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Eugene M. Lerner told Reginald Cooper of Ridgely in Caroline County."

While not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I admire those pocket-size cutting implements that do a good job under sometimes adverse conditions with a minimum of bells and whistles. It doesn't sound like a big demand, but the market is crowded with knives that aren't cutting-edge. That's not true of Wenger's Evolution Soft Touch 14 Knife. The maker of Swiss Army knives has given this model a 2 1/2 -inch blade, scissors, locking screwdriver, tweezers (that double as a tick remover), wire stripper, can and bottle openers, corkscrew and about six other tools.

$2.5 million awarded to avert foreclosures Gov. Martin O'Malley has announced more than $2.5 million in federal, state and local awards to be used toward home foreclosure prevention in Maryland. The awards Wednesday include $1.8 million from National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling and $500,000 from the state of Maryland. Federal funds will be distributed among 30 nonprofit housing counseling agencies and two statewide legal service providers, Civil Justice Network and the Pro Bono Resource Center.

Sometime after checking into the Sheraton hotel in Towson last week, William M. Parente went across the street to the Towson Town Center and bought the knife he used to kill himself. Baltimore County detectives found a receipt from a mall store for the knife among Parente's belongings after his body was discovered Monday in a 10th-floor room with those of his wife and two daughters, police spokesman Cpl. Michael Hill said Thursday. Parente beat and asphyxiated the girls, Stephanie, 19, and Catherine, 11, and their mother, Betty, 58, police said.

City police have arrested a man in the stabbing death Tuesday of his estranged wife's boyfriend. According to charging documents, police were called about 11:15 p.m. to the 1300 block of Dundalk Ave. in Southeast Baltimore, where William L. Smith, 24, was sitting in the passenger seat of a Pontiac Sunfire, unconscious and suffering from a wound to his upper chest. Smith was pronounced dead at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center just before midnight. About the same time, another officer responded to the 6500 block of Cleveland Ave. for a report of an assault and learned that Smith and girlfriend Christine Jeddock had just left after visiting Jeddock's husband, Matthew J. Jeddock Jr. Matthew Jeddock, 45, is alleged to have told the responding officer that his "wife's boyfriend beat the [expletive]

Golden Hill -How do you skin a muskrat? Let's ask an expert. Here's Dakota Abbott, 17, the only woman to win a muskrat-skinning contest and the Miss Outdoors Pageant. Her father and uncle, both former muskrat-skinning champs, taught her to skin her first muskrat when she was 14. "The first cut is crucial. You have to pinch the fur at the hind legs and cut straight into that meaty area there. You slice down and out real quick and just push your rat inside out," Abbott was saying Friday night as she watched three male cousins skin muskrats.

City police fatally shoot knife-wielding man A city police officer fatally shot a man last night in an East Baltimore house when the man lunged at police with a knife after stabbing two other people in the dwelling, a department spokesman said. Names of the dead man, the stabbing victims and the officer were not available last night, police said. Officer Troy Harris, the spokesman, said Eastern District police responding to a report of a stabbing inside a house in the 800 block of N. Belnord Ave. about 10:50 p.m. entered the dwelling and found two people in a room bleeding from stab wounds; a man standing nearby was armed with a knife.

A knife fight broke out yesterday between two brothers employed at a popular downtown Annapolis restaurant, scattering workers and sending diners fleeing from their lunches of burritos and rice. Two brothers who work in the kitchen at El Toro Bravo on West Street began arguing over their duties and took the dispute into the bar, where one wielded a large kitchen knife in front of patrons. Both suffered cuts, but neither was seriously hurt, said Officer Hal Dalton, a city police spokesman.

Prosecutors said yesterday they do not believe that a homemade knife found a few hours after the 2006 fatal stabbing of a corrections officer in a Jessup prison - and which disappeared and later resurfaced as a weapon confiscated from an inmate - was the weapon used in the murder. The disclosure came at the start of the trial of five corrections officers accused of beating an inmate and planting the knife on him to justify the beating - a rare criminal prosecution of guards accused of assaulting an inmate.

An Anne Arundel County judge agreed yesterday to hear arguments on whether to release records concerning a homemade knife to lawyers for two inmates accused in last year's killing of a correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction. Investigators have said in written reports that they consider the knife to be potential evidence in the July 25, 2006, killing of David W. McGuinn, noting that the knife was initially found near where he was killed. The shank turned up missing for two days and reappeared tagged into evidence as having been taken from an inmate during a strip search, according to documents obtained by The Sun. Investigators said it would have been impossible for the inmate to have the 8 1/2 -inch knife.

Colleagues of slain Maryland Correctional Officer David W. McGuinn have done his memory a disservice. In trying to explain away the beating of an inmate, they may have seriously compromised an investigation into the officer's murder. Add to that the slipshod handling of a piece of evidence, and the prosecution's job of convicting his accused killers becomes exceedingly harder. That's no formula for justice. The aftermath of Officer McGuinn's July 25, 2006 death at the House of Correction in Jessup was a chaotic and dangerous affair, as reported by The Sun's Greg Garland.