Knife

Last Friday, a mentally ill man attacked 22 elementary school children in China, yet none of them died ("Man with knife attacks Chinese kids; 22 hurt," Dec. 15). Why? Because his weapon was a knife. Presumably, guns are much harder to come by in China. Oh, would that our own country were not awash in guns! Jill Singleton, Sykesville Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

A Baltimore school staff member was injured Monday during an altercation with a woman who pulled out a knife when she was informed she couldn't visit a student, according to city school officials. The school system lauded the rapid actions of school employees who stopped the unsupervised visitor, at a time when school systems across the country are being especially vigilant after a mass shooting at a Connecticut school Friday in which 20 children and six school employees were killed.

City police are investigating a sexual assault of a female jogger, who was attacked by a man armed with a knife in Fells Point Friday morning. Police are unclear of the exact location but say a woman in her 20s was attacked between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. by a man who was possibly wearing a mask and armed with a knife. The victim received medical treatment and has met with investigators, police said. She has met with TurnAround, Inc. a victim advocacy group that has partnered with the police department to investigate sex crimes.

A man wearing a bandana over his face robbed an Edgewater gas station at knifepoint early Sunday morning, Anne Arundel police said. The man entered Xtra Mart Fuel in the 3000 block of Solomons Island Road, pulled a knife and demanded the clerk hand over money, police said. When the clerk could not give him any money, the suspect fled in a vehicle, according to police. Several police units searched the area but were unable to find the man, whom police described as in his early 20s, with a thin build and wearing a dark-colored or maroon hooded jacket.

A 17-year-old student at Southern High School was arrested Tuesday morning after police say he was found in possession of a knife and an unloaded pellet gun. Anne Arundel County police said a resource officer assigned to the school, in the 4400 block of Solomons Island Road in Harwood, was told at about 11 a.m. that a student was carrying a weapon and displayed it to another student. The officer located the student in the cafeteria during lunch and found that he was carrying a knife and a CO-2 powered pellet gun, which was not loaded and had no cartridge inserted.

The Exxon gas station was robbed by a man with a knife early Tuesday morning. A man holding what looked like a kitchen knife walked into the gas station at the intersection of Route 924 and Singer Road in Abingdon shortly after midnight Monday. He demanded cash from the clerk, who handed over an undisclosed amount of cash, then ran out of the store and down Singer Road, Maryland State Police TFC Michael Bonczewski said Thursday. The robber is described as a white man who was wearing black pants and a gray hooded sweat shirt with the hood covering most of his face.

I am responding to a researcher's questionnaire about editing and the role of the editor. One question invites me to suggest a metaphor for editing, and the first that occurred to me is one I have made previously in these dispatches: surgery. Editors must deal with the text as it is. Sometimes the best we can achieve is to make the substandard mediocre, because, as I often quote Anthony Trollope, "One cannot pour out of a jug more than is in it. " So we as editors start looking for diseased tissue to excise.

It wasn't the neon-green comb tucked in a loose-leaf notebook that caught the eye of a TSA screener at BWI Monday morning — it was what the comb concealed: a knife with a 4-inch blade. Pamela Whitfield, 31, of Hampton, Va., was charged with carrying an unauthorized weapon through airport security, a misdemeanor, after an X-ray machine operator noticed an "unusual image," said Kawika Riley, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman. The comb was lying along the binder's spine among some papers and a folder.

The woman who allegedly stabbed her infant daughter at a city social services office Tuesday concealed the knife in a purse that was hand-searched by security guards but not put through a metal detector, a top state official says. Theodore Dallas, secretary of the Department of Human Resources, said Friday that private security guards who missed the long, silver-bladed kitchen knife followed procedures in place at the time. The 29-year-old suspect, who has been charged with attempted murder, did go through a metal detector at the building's entrance, he said.