Medical Examiner S Office

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo found that she had massive, irreversible brain damage, a Florida medical examiner's office said yesterday in a report that gave scientific support to her husband's decision to withdraw her feeding tube. But for Schiavo's parents and others, the findings didn't end the ethical or medical debate that eventually drew in Congress and the White House. Bob and Mary Schindler still say that their daughter would not have wanted her life ended and that she was not in a persistent vegetative state, their lawyer, David Gibbs III, said.

An 8-year-old boy drowned in an Abingdon stream near his home Friday night, the Harford County Sheriff's Office said. Justin Hayes Wilson was playing with a 7-year-old friend about 7:30 p.m., skimming stones on a stream located about a half-mile behind a housing development in the 1300 block of Harford Town Drive, when he slipped and fell into the water. His friend tried several times to reach him, but couldn't and ran home to get help, police said. The child's parents called 911. Members of the Harford County Sheriff's Office, the Abingdon Volunteer Fire Company, the APG Fire Department and the Kingsville Volunteer Fire Company responded to the call.

FRUITLAND - The death of a Wicomico County public defender whose body was found Tuesday in his parked pickup truck has been ruled a suicide by the state medical examiner's office. An autopsy performed yesterday determined that Anthony T. Carozza, 40, died of multiple cut wounds to his wrists, complicated by hypothermia, according to Dr. Laron Locke of the medical examiner's office. Carozza, who lived in Salisbury's Coulborn Mill Village neighborhood, was found about 4 a.m. in the truck, which was parked beside a recreational complex in Fruitland.

Thirty-four years after he was shot by Baltimore police for swinging a hatchet at an officer, a 62-year-old city man has died as a result of his wounds, according to police and the medical examiner's office. Police said James Cornelius Watkins died March 12 at Northwest Hospital Center from sepsis. He had been paralyzed and held at a care facility since he was shot Dec. 3, 1975, after escaping from a prison work crew and committing a home invasion. According to reports from the time, he lunged at an officer and was shot in the chest.

Thirty-four years after he was shot by Baltimore police for swinging a hatchet at an officer, a 62-year-old city man has died as a result of his wounds, according to police and the medical examiner's office. Police said James Cornelius Watkins died March 12 at Northwest Hospital Center from sepsis. He had been paralyzed and held at a care facility since he was shot Dec. 3, 1975, after escaping from a prison work crew and committing a home invasion. According to reports from the time, he lunged at an officer and was shot in the chest.

Joseph A. Scalia II, a University of Baltimore law student, said yesterday that the state medical examiner's office on Penn Street will serve as a backdrop when he announces his candidacy today as a Republican contender for mayor of Baltimore.Mr. Scalia said the medical examiner's office, which houses the morgue, is an appropriate place to kick off his candidacy because he intends to make an issue of the soaring number of homicides in the city. As of yesterday, there had been 80 homicides in Baltimore during 1991, police spokeswoman Arlene Arlene K. Jenkins said, four more than during the same period in 1990.

HOW'S THIS for sheer baffling irony? Folks gathered in the City Council chamber Tuesday to excoriate Baltimore police Commissioner Ed Norris. Three African-Americans -- one former lieutenant and two officers still on the force -- said that the disparity in discipline for black and white cops still exists. That's a horrible double standard, they moaned, apparently oblivious to the other double standard. It's the one they applied to Norris, the white guy. Has there ever been a black police commissioner -- and there have been several -- who's gone through this type of reconfirmation hearing?

At least 21 people in Maryland have died from the extreme heat this summer, including seven in Baltimore. Yet the names and addresses of the victims have not been made public or given to state and city agencies responsible for advising people on how to stay healthy. In some other states, such as Pennsylvania, the names of the victims of public health crises are released as soon as the cause of death has been determined. That allows independent agencies to analyze mortality trends and observe demographic or geographic patterns in deaths.

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 275 THE VICTIMS: The death of a boy, 3, who died of head injuries June 8 at Harbor Hospital has been ruled a homicide by beating. The death remains under investigation, and no arrest had been made. A woman who was 16 when she was shot Nov. 28, 1999, on a West Baltimore street and paralyzed died Sept. 20. Her death has been ruled a homicide by the medical examiner's office. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 263 homicides as of Dec. 18, 2006.

Baltimore's inspector general must not have enough to do - or he's taken to impersonating a homicide detective. Someone at City Hall needs to remind Hilton Green that his primary responsibility is ferreting out government waste, fraud and abuse. Looking into the death of a well-known Baltimore contractor is a sizable stretch from his job description. Mr. Green has reportedly paid a visit to the state medical examiner's office in the matter of the May 16, 2005 death of Robert Lee Clay, who promoted minority business interests and their participation in government contracts.

A paramedic has been suspended without pay after an investigation into an incident in which a man shot by Baltimore police was mistakenly pronounced dead and left on a convenience store floor for 30 minutes. Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright said the paramedic, whose name he declined to release on the grounds that it is a personnel matter, was suspended for 29 days without pay and will have to undergo retraining as a result of the Aug. 1 incident. Cartwright declined to discuss details of the investigation and suspension.

The family of a Westminster man who died after lung transplant surgery last year has filed a wrongful-death suit against the University of Maryland Medical Center and a subcontractor for what they say was a botched procedure. According to the lawsuit, the family of Bryan Harris alleges that a contracted staffer incorrectly removed a clamp after the surgery in June 2008, allowing all of the patient's blood to drain into a bucket. Harris, 51, is survived by his wife, his parents and two children.

Baltimore's inspector general must not have enough to do - or he's taken to impersonating a homicide detective. Someone at City Hall needs to remind Hilton Green that his primary responsibility is ferreting out government waste, fraud and abuse. Looking into the death of a well-known Baltimore contractor is a sizable stretch from his job description. Mr. Green has reportedly paid a visit to the state medical examiner's office in the matter of the May 16, 2005 death of Robert Lee Clay, who promoted minority business interests and their participation in government contracts.

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 275 THE VICTIMS: The death of a boy, 3, who died of head injuries June 8 at Harbor Hospital has been ruled a homicide by beating. The death remains under investigation, and no arrest had been made. A woman who was 16 when she was shot Nov. 28, 1999, on a West Baltimore street and paralyzed died Sept. 20. Her death has been ruled a homicide by the medical examiner's office. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 263 homicides as of Dec. 18, 2006.

OCEAN CITY -- Police wrapped up their three-day search yesterday at the house where four tiny bodies were found but said it might be a week or more before they receive a report on the remains from the state medical examiner's office. Forensics experts at the Baltimore lab who are studying the remains, including three that police say are mostly bones, need more time, police officials said. "We were told that the medical examiner's office is consulting with other experts," said police spokesman Pfc. Barry Neeb.

A 24-year-old man was shot and killed early yesterday as he was driving on Ellerslie Avenue in North Baltimore's Better Waverly neighborhood, city police said. The victim, George Wilson, of the 700 block of Gorsuch Ave., was pronounced dead at Johns Hopkins Hospital about 90 minutes after the 12:20 a.m. shooting, police said. The shooting occurred in the 3100 block of Ellerslie Ave., a few blocks from Greenmount Avenue and East 33rd Street. Police said Wilson, driving a late-model blue Cadillac, had just turned right onto Ellerslie Avenue from Gorsuch Avenue when an occupant of a dark sedan fired into the car, striking him in the head.

The human skull found by two Baltimore County men Tuesday near the Liberty Reservoir is at the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore, where forensic pathologists will try to determine its identity.State police Trooper First Class John Wisniewski said yesterday that police are treating the area where the skull was found as "a crime scene," but he speculated that it will be difficult -- if not impossible -- to determine how the skull got to the patch of dirt near the reservoir in Eldersburg.

Again and again, the standard DNA tests came up negative on a 3-inch-by-2-inch piece of muscle recovered from the World Trade Center site, and a year after the 2001 attacks, forensics experts were stymied. Yet now the scrap has been linked to a firefighter from Midtown Manhattan, enabling his death to be confirmed and giving his wife and two children some sense of finality. Solving brutally difficult cases like that one required an investment of two extra years and millions of dollars by the medical examiner's office in New York, which sought out and used DNA identification technologies that had never been tried before.

Ten days after an East Baltimore fire that caused seven deaths, the state medical examiner has at last identified all of the victims -- a process complicated by scant medical records, the severity of the burns and the ever-shifting population of the crowded rowhouse on Cecil Avenue. Only two of the dead have been buried so far. But relatives are hoping that tomorrow they can have a single funeral for the remaining victims, even as they express frustration over the prolonged grieving process that they say has made their anguish worse.