Man Escaped

Patrick Liggett left the Anne Arundel County Courthouse yesterday $75,500 in debt, but with reason to be happy.He is free.The 33-year-old welder expressed relief and remorse after Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Clayton Greene Jr. agreed at a hearing to let him remain free so he can continue to repay the victims he conned out of cash through a phony vending-machine business."

William Longthorne managed to escape from Kuwait under the guns of the Iraqi army by crossing the desert into Saudi Arabia. Then, on Tuesday, he got mugged in the parking lot of a Linthicum hotel.The 64-year-old mechanical engineer was standing in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, in the 800 block of Elkridge Landing Road at about 10:40 p.m. when he was approached by a man who pointed a gun at him, said he was hungry and demanded all his money.Longthorne didn't have any cash on hand, so he turned over a watch worth $200.

A 20-year-old man who escaped from Johns Hopkins Hospital on Sunday after taking a gun from a city officer and shooting at four other officers was arrested yesterday on the roof of a house in East Baltimore, police said.Oswald Gerald Trayham of the 700 block of Wharton Court was arrested about 10 a.m. by police who had received a tip that he was hiding in a house in the 1200 block of East Preston Street, said Dennis S. Hill, a police spokesman.A .38-caliber revolver believed to belong to a city police officer was found in the chimney of the building where Mr. Trayham was captured, Mr. Hill said.

BALTIMORE -- A man who escaped in leg irons, handcuffs and a waist chain Monday while being moved from the city's Detention Center to the Northwestern District police station was captured late Thursday still wearing the shackles.Raymond Joseph Bell, 40, of the 5700 block of Bland Ave. was arrested after a patrol officer spotted him at 11:45 p.m. sitting on the front steps of a public library branch in the 3100 block of Garrison Blvd. He was still wearing the leg chains and handcuffs, but the chains had been severed, said Barbara Cooper, a prison spokeswoman.

Four people, including two children, died early Saturday in a mobile home fire in Earleville in Cecil County, the state fire marshal's office reports. The fire at 645 Knights Island Road was reported about 2 a.m., said Bruce D. Bouch, deputy fire marshal. The identities of the victims were not released. One of the children was believed to be 8 years old, and the other 4 months old, Bouch said. About 40 firefighters from Cecilton, Galena, Millington, Betterton, Chesapeake City, Hack's Point and Middletown, Del., brought the fire under control in about an hour, according to the fire marshal's office.

Howard County police had one suspect in custody and were searching yesterday for another who is believed to have hijacked a car to escape after a home-invasion robbery at a Columbia apartment building.Two women and their four children were terrified but unhurt in the robbery, which occurred about 6: 30 p.m. Friday in the 12200 block of Green Meadow Drive in Harper's Choice village.According to police, one of the women was accosted by two men after taking out the trash.She was forced inside and, at gunpoint, she and a visiting friend, along with their four children, were ordered into a room.

Just as Charles Kronsberg sat down to admire the Statue of Liberty from the 55th floor of New York's World Trade Center, the lights went out, the windows rattled, and the dramatic view was blurred."

Two men unleashed several pit bulls on a man they had tied to a chair yesterday, then shot him twice when he managed to escape and tried to flee, Baltimore County police said. The unusual attack, which police cannot fully explain, occurred about 2 p.m. in the 3100 block of Rolling Road, south of Randallstown. Police said the man, who is not being identified, gave two acquaintances a ride from an unknown Pikesville location to the Rolling Road address. The man, believed to be in his 30s, then accompanied the two men inside.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly provides an ecstatic lift for movielovers, despite the tragic subject. The diving bell stands for the physical state of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby: A devastating stroke, at age 43, sends this smart, chic Parisian into "locked-in syndrome," which leaves thoughts and feelings intact within an inert body. Bauby can see and hear (though with increasing difficulty), but his sole means of expressing himself comes from blinking his left eyelid. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax)

Baltimore County police were conducting a man hunt in Essex late Friday after a man headed to jail after a bail hearing at the Essex District Courthouse broke free from the private security officers, "took off running" and escaped custody shortly after 8 p.m., according to police. The unidentified man had been arrested on a charge of attempted felony theft, said Det. Cathy Batton, a police spokeswoman. He had just been before a commissioner in the courthouse in the 8900 block of Kelso Drive, and was outside about to be taken to the Baltimore County Detention Center when he escaped from security officers, Batton said.