Mall Security

Howard County police have issued an arrest warrant for a 41-year-old Baltimore man who they believe attacked a shopping mall security guard with a box cutter last month after being suspected of shoplifting. According to police, Terrell Andre Webb of the 1500 block of N. Decker Ave. was stopped about 4:20 p.m. on Feb. 27 by Kevin Seaton and another security guard, after Webb tried to leave a Macy's store wearing several items of clothing that the guards believed he had put on in the dressing area.

LOS ANGELES -- Members of a suburban Van Nuys Girl Scout troop who showed up for a shopping trip at the Northridge Fashion Square were at first denied entry by security officials enforcing a policy designed to prevent gang violence.Mall officials say the guards were just doing their jobs, but the leader of Troop 823 said yesterday that the scouts deserve an apology."The guard said a group with more than three people was a gang. I said 'Do we look like a gang? Look at these girls, we have adults here, they are clean cut and they have lots of supervision,' " said troop leader Lois Young.

An argument between two women at the food court of Annapolis Mall on Saturday night spilled into the parking lot, where a man police believe was linked to one of the women was stabbed several times with a pocketknife, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. The man, who was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center as a precaution, was in good condition with stab wounds to the shoulder and back, said police spokeswoman Lisa Ritter.The argument broke out shortly before 10 p.m. in the food court, and a mall security guard asked both women to leave.

Baltimore County police returned to Security Square Mall yesterday to search for a 3-year-old girl reported missing Wednesday night when her mother was shopping at the Montgomery Ward store.Police said Darntrell Griffin, 21, of the 900 block of Homestead St., told them she was shopping in the appliances section with her boyfriend around 7:30 p.m. when she noticed her daughter, Shante Denise Harris, was missing."We haven't found anybody yet who saw the child," said E. Jay Miller, police spokesman.

For the second time in three days, a young child was brutally beaten.This time the abuse proved fatal.Five-month-old April Brown died at 12:06 p.m. at the University of Maryland Medical Center. She had suffered severe blows to the head and had spent much of the morning on a life-support system.Her father, 24-year-old Michael David Brown, was charged with physical child abuse, assault and battery, and reckless endangerment. He might be charged with first-degree murder -- pending the outcome of the autopsy, which will conducted today.

County police arrested a Baltimore woman Tuesday and charged her with stabbing her estranged husband in the neck on the Annapolis Mall parking lot, county police said.David L. Matthews, 34, of the 8200 block of Melbourne Place in Millersville was at Annapolis Mall with his girlfriend about 2 p.m. Tuesday and went into the men's room at the Montgomery Ward store to change into his uniform before he went to work as a county detention center guard.When he came out of the bathroom, he was accosted by a woman who threatened him with a 5-inch steak knife, police said.

Teen-ager gets 18-year term in carjacking, robberyA 17-year-old Jessup youth was sentenced last week to 18 years in prison for a carjacking in which a Sears employee and her car were forcibly taken across county lines to withdraw money from an automated teller machine.Howard Circuit Judge James B. Dudley sentenced Daniel G. Falcone Nov. 7 for carjacking and armed robbery. Dudley also placed Falcone, of the 8300 block of Ashwood Road, on five years of supervised probation after he is released.

WASHINGTON -- A Baltimore woman claiming she was wrongfully strip searched in a Sam Goody music store at Eastpoint Mall filed suit yesterday against its parent company, a store employee, the shoping center and two of its security guards, seeking a total of $148 million.Donita Garrett, 29, who said she is a Baltimore high school art teacher, alleged that she was subjected to the search in February and that a store employee directed racial slurs and profanity at her and a friend because Ms. Garrett is white and the friend is black.

A Laurel mother's lawsuit alleging racial profiling at The Mall in Columbia is scheduled to go to trial next month, four years after she filed the suit. Howard County Circuit Judge James B. Dudley rejected this week efforts by mall attorneys to postpone the trial. It is scheduled for June 5. Prince George's County resident Sandra Allen is seeking $1.2 million in punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to be determined at trial. The suit says that Allen, her son and his friend, all of whom are African-American, ate at a mall food court Dec. 21, 1995.