Liquor Store

The city's liquor board decided after a four-hour hearing yesterday to renew the liquor license of Pimlico Discount Liquors at 5142 Pimlico Road despite the owner's guilty pleas this year to charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and selling alcohol to minors.Phillip Minn, who has owned the store since 1989, was fined $500 for possessing drug paraphernalia this year.Stephen George, a Park Heights resident, protested against renewal of the store's license, but he was outnumbered at the hearing by two dozen residents supporting Minn.

The face of the mayor looks down from a wall of Kay's Liquor store at Biddle and Milton, on a poster promoting a "neighborhood conversation," an opportunity to "join us to discuss ideas and solutions for tackling Baltimore City's vacant and abandoned properties." Michelle Ha, the owner, promotes activities like this. She urges her customers to go, to listen, to contribute, to make this city, her city, a better place. She not only planned to attend Wednesday's meeting, she spent the previous day at City Hall volunteering to help organize the event.

An Upper Marlboro man was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison for robbing a North Laurel liquor store at gunpoint in September.Jermaine Isaac Davis, 20, was given two five-year terms -- one for armed robbery and a second for using a weapon during a felony -- by Howard Circuit Judge Cornelius Sybert Jr.Judge Sybert also ordered Davis to complete three years of supervised probation for the Sept. 7, 1994, robbery at Whiskey Bottom Liquors in the 9100 block of All Saints Road.Davis was convicted by a jury in December.

A Shadyside man was arrested Saturday after a pursuit by car and on foot, and charged with robbing an Edgewater liquor store, Anne Arundel County police said. The robbery occurred about 9 a.m. at Muddy Creek Liquors on Mayo Road, where a man with a sawed-off shotgun took an undisclosed sum from the owner, Yogeshi Hirpara, 37, and fled in a blue Ford Escort. Minutes later, Officer Beth Miller spotted the vehicle and she and several other officers pursued it from Edgewater to Shadyside.

The county liquor board imposed a six-day suspension on an Eldersburg package goods store for selling beer to an underage police cadet.The Board of License Commissioners announced its decision after hearing testimony that Carrolltown Liquors, in the 6400 block of Ridge Road, sold a six-pack of beer to the 20-year-old cadet after asking for his identification May 23.In lieu of serving the suspension, Jesse David Noland, the liquor store licensee, may pay...

A Littlestown, Pa., man pleaded guilty yesterday in Carroll County Circuit Court to charges of robbing a liquor store and shooting at the owner.Nicholas D. Reese, 18, will be sentenced Aug. 25, court records show.Prosecutors said Reese and a 14-year-old co-defendant used a .20-gauge shotgun to rob Penn-Mar Liquors on Francis Scott Key Highway near the Pennsylvania line May 7, 1997.After taking a small amount of money, the bandits ran across a field to their getaway vehicle, parked on Ruggles Road.

Working side-by-side, a band of small liquor store owners and Baptists are fighting a proposed beer and wine superstore just north of Columbia at the new Long Gate Shopping Center. More than 100 people packed a hearing room Tuesday night for a meeting of the Howard County Liquor Board.Total Beverage -- which has three stores in Northern Virginia each featuring 500 varieties of beer and 5,000 different wines -- contends there is sufficient demand for a warehouse-style store in the new "power center" near the intersection of U.S. 29 and Route 100.Total Beverage presented its argument this week, saying it deserved a sales license in the name of free enterprise.

An armed man robbed a North Laurel liquor store Monday night, Howard County police said.The cashier at the Island Liquors store was not injured in the 11:40 p.m. robbery, police said.The gunman entered the store in the 10000 block of Washington Blvd. and demanded money, police said.After the cashier complied, the robber ran to a dark-colored car that appeared to be late 1970s or early 1980s model Chevrolet Camaro and drove away, police said.The robber was described as black, about 5 feet 9 inches, 155 pounds, with short hair and brown eyes.

For the second time, a federal judge has rejected a Baltimore County liquor store's antitrust challenge to the Prohibition-era laws governing distribution of alcoholic beverages in Maryland. Beltway Fine Wine & Spirits in Towson, one of the state's largest package stores, argued that state efforts to promote temperance unfairly discouraged competition, but U.S. District Judge Frederic N. Smalkin ruled last week that Maryland's controls on liquor pricing and distribution are lawful. "The state's interest in protecting the health, safety and morals of its citizens, in this case, outweighs the federal interest in promoting economic competition in the alcoholic beverage industry," Smalkin said in his decision.

Two men were charged with burglary Sunday after officers responding to an alarm at a Jessup liquor store stopped their vehicle outside the store, Howard County police said.The men -- Glenn Harris Newman, 38, of the 8300 block of Wades Way in Jessup and Edward Bradley Brown, 36, of the 14700 block of Fourth St. in Laurel -- were charged with burglary, carrying a handgun in a vehicle, theft and malicious destruction of property, police said.Brown was being held at the Howard County Detention Center on $500,000 bond yesterday.