Middle River

The state's highest court has upheld the murder and related convictions of a Dundalk man who police said was involved in a 2009 drug deal gone awry and fatally shot a bystander as she was speaking with relatives who had returned from church. In a decision issued Tuesday, a unanimous Court of Appeals rejected all of Warren Jerome Yates' claims, including that Baltimore County prosecutors lacked evidence to prove he committed a second-degree felony murder. Yates was convicted in 2009 of that, along with weapons, drug and assault charges, and sentenced to a total of 75 years in prison.

Edward A. "Al" Vanik Jr., a retired Baltimore County Police Department detective, died Sept. 5 of Osler-Weber-Rendu syndrome, a genetic disease that causes excessive bleeding, at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air. He was 79. The son of a butcher and a homemaker, Edward Albert Vanik Jr. was born and raised in Fullerton. He graduated in 1951 from Towson Catholic High School and enlisted in the Navy the next year. Mr. Vanik served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid as an aviation structural mechanic second class until his discharge in 1956.

Department of Natural Resoruces Police started a third day's search early Thursday for a 52-year-old boater missing and presumed dead in Middle River creek. As divers stopped searching Wednesday, another body was located in the Chester River across the Chesapeake Bay, according to DNR police. The first person was separated from his boat in the Frog Mortar Creek Tuesday afternoon, said Sgt. Brian Albert, a DNR Police spokesman. Neither the man nor the body had been identified as of Thursday morning.

A 52-year-old man remained missing in Frog Mortar Creek near the Bowleys Quarter area of Baltimore County as of Wednesday afternoon, about 24 hours after he was last seen separated from his boat in the water, police said. Divers and other recovery personnel with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police and the Baltimore County Fire Department resumed searching for the man Wednesday morning after hours in the water near Martin State Airport on Tuesday. They will continue searching the waters, with the help of side scan sonar, until they recover a body or the sun sets, said Sgt. Brian Albert, a DNR police spokesman.

For the first time in her memory, Jessica Long dreaded swimming. With high school coming to an end, her friends cut loose -- bonfires, movie nights. It all sounded so fun and Long, a seven-time Paralympic gold medalist, had to skip out so she could hit the pool at the crack of dawn. "It was bad," she recalls two years later. "I wasn't happy. " Few could have guessed it given her bounty of medals, but Long felt she had failed at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. She had promised seven gold medals to anyone who would listen, plastering the number all over her bedroom in Middle River.

Jessica Long has had to overcome obstacles all of her life. The field she had to beat out to win an ESPY on Wednesday night for the Best Female Athlete with a Disability was a tough one, filled with some remarkable athletes. Long, who had to have her legs amputated when she was just 18 months old in Russia where she was born, triumphed once again, winning the award for the second time. The swimmer is the second repeat winner in the award's history. Long grew up in Middle River after emigrating from Russia.

An inside look at Baltimore party boat culture You probably shouldn't be reading this right now. According to my husband, I should be telling you that the idea of a Baltimore Boating Culture is a myth. A lie. Who would want to swim in that dirty, radioactive water? Middle River? How … mediocre. Dundalk - just leave it right there. People don't want to know about the hours spent playing floating beer pong with friends on the water, or the countless dock bar parties, live music and sandy beaches.

You probably shouldn't be reading this right now. According to my husband, I should be telling you that the idea of a Baltimore Boating Culture is a myth. A lie. Who would want to swim in that dirty, radioactive water? Middle River? How … mediocre. Dundalk - just leave it right there. People don't want to know about the hours spent playing floating beer pong with friends on the water, or the countless dock bar parties, live music and sandy beaches. Or how to get an ocean -perfect tan 20 minutes from the city - instead of three hours.

Joseph Lawrence "Larry" Bohlen Jr., who had been director of risk management for CSX, died Friday of multiple organ failure at his Rossville home. He was 76. Mr. Bohlen, whose father was superintendent at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River and whose mother was a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on his family's farm in Rosedale. Mr. Bohlen — who did not use his first name — was a 1953 graduate of Kenwood High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park and a law degree from the University of Baltimore.

A mother and daughter from Middle River have pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation for their involvement in an incident in 2010 in which a dead raccoon was hung by a noose from an African family's Middle River porch, prosecutors said Tuesday. Dena Whedlee, 42, and her daughter Brittany Whedlee, 20, admitted to encouraging their co-conspirators - including Billy Ray Pratt, 24, of Halethorpe, and Joshua Wall, 20, of Essex - to hang the raccoon from the family's porch after a boy in the family got into a fight with Dena Whedlee's son, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein.