Man Is Charged

A Columbia man was arrested yesterday and charged with sexual offenses and second-degree assault of a 5-year-old girl near a pond this week, Howard County police reported last night. Police said Miguel Ramos, 34, of the 5800 block of Stevens Forest Road in Oakland Mills was charged on three sex offense counts and one count of assault and was awaiting an appearance before a court commissioner. Police said the girl was attacked in a secluded area near Jackson Pond in Long Reach village about 2 p.m. Sunday after a man distracted her 11-year-old brother by telling him to go fishing.

CHESTERTOWN - Former Eastern Shore basketball star Carlton Dotson was arrested here last night on Texas charges that he killed his missing Baylor University teammate and friend Patrick Dennehy, authorities said. Dotson's arrest came more than a month after Dennehy, 21, was reported missing, sparking a nationwide investigation in which Dotson was the central figure. Dotson, being escorted from a court commissioner's office last night, told an Associated Press reporter: "I didn't confess to anything.

A Howard County police officer was slightly injured early yesterday when a man accused of drunken driving hit him on U.S. 1 in Elkridge, police say. Officer Charles Toler was standing outside his marked cruiser in the southbound lanes of the 5800 block of U.S. 1 at 3:45 a.m., responding to an attempted burglary call, when a 1996 Toyota Avalon crossed the center line and hit him in the leg and his car on the driver's side mirror, police said. Police said they found 35 baggies of suspected heroin in the Avalon.

Charges were filed yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court against a Rosedale man alleged to have acted as an unlicensed gun dealer in the illegal sale of firearms in the Baltimore area, the state attorney general's office announced. Gerry James Hege, 30, of the 8000 block of Roslyn Ave. was charged with one count of selling regulated firearms without a dealer's license and nine counts of illegal transfer of weapons. Charges also were filed in area courts against three men accused of purchasing guns from Hege without completing required paperwork: Ronald Gorman Frank, 41, of the 3000 block of Prospect Road in Harford County and Travis Todd Bynaker of the 1000 block of Anglesea St. in Baltimore, both of whom have criminal records, and Scott Kreh, 33, of the 600 block of Mace Ave. in Essex.

A 26-year-old man was charged with attempted murder yesterday in the shooting of four police officers during what should have been a routine and lightning-fast raid on a North Baltimore rowhouse that netted authorities only a small amount of drugs - six small bags of marijuana and an ounce of cocaine. While the suspect, Lewis Cauthorne, was being held last night at the Central Booking and Intake Center, city officials and residents expressed surprise that such violence erupted Tuesday night in the normally placid Cameron Village neighborhood.

A 37-year-old Severn man was charged yesterday with first-degree murder in the death of a woman whose body was found in a trash bin behind his home late Monday, according to charging documents. Byron Alonzo Huff of the 1800 block of Richfield Drive admitted to Anne Arundel County police that he had "stabbed the victim several times" in the chest, the court documents state. Officers found the body of Holly Jean Keefe, 34, of the 8200 block of Deerfield Circle in Severn shortly after Huff's wife, Leornia Huff, called police, saying that her husband might have harmed someone.

A 37-year-old Westminster man is accused of fatally stabbing his ex-mother-in-law and holding his 5-year-old son hostage for about an hour yesterday before police arrested him and rescued the child, authorities said. Leon A. Costley Jr., was being held last night at the Carroll County Detention Center in the death of 53-year-old Helga Nicholls, also of Westminster. He is charged with first- and second-degree murder. Costley, who was divorced in June from Nicholls' daughter, had at one time been under court order to stay away from his then-mother-in-law's house, according to court records.

A Circuit Court judge granted Baltimore prosecutors two more months yesterday to try to shore up a first-degree murder case complicated by witness problems - including a police officer who gave colleagues two differing statements about what he saw. The trial of Keko O. Worrell, 22, was scheduled to begin yesterday. Instead, prosecutor Gerald Volatile asked the judge for a postponement. He explained his reasons for the request in discouraging detail: He started with six witnesses, he told the court.

A Middle River man was charged with murder yesterday in the death of his wife, whose body was found dumped along Mohrs Lane, according to Baltimore County police. Police said Lloyd Preston McCaskill of the 9800 block of Dee Way killed his 20-year-old wife, Marie Elizabeth McCaskill, by either beating or strangling her after an argument. Officials said McCaskill called police to report her missing at 7:20 a.m. Friday. Marie McCaskill's body was discovered at 8:30 a.m. Friday by a pedestrian near the Mohrs Lane bridge between Pulaski Highway and Philadelphia Road.