Motel Room

The body of an unidentified man was found in a Jessup motel room early yesterday, moments after a manager confronted someone in the victim's car, Howard County police said.Police searched the room at the Cedar Motel in the 8000 block of Washington Blvd. for about six hours after arriving at 4:45 a.m. yesterday.Police would not say whether a weapon was found in the room. It did not appear that there had been a struggle, and the motive for the killing was unclear, said Cpl. Kevin Costello, a county police department spokesman.

A 24-year-old woman was threatened Saturday by a man who put a gun to her head at a Motel 6 in Laurel, Anne Arundel County police said. Officers were summoned to the motel in the 3500 block of Old Annapolis Road, where the woman works, shortly after 10:30 a.m. The victim reported that a black man approached her from behind and pointed a handgun at her head in an attempt to force her into a motel room. Police said the suspect fled after a witness came by and saw what was happening.

County police arrested an Annapolis man on assault charges Monday after a fight in a Laurel motel room.Police said the man and a woman believed to be his girlfriend had been drinking in a room of the Laurel East Motel, 3700 block of Laurel Fort Meade Road. When the woman tried to leave shortly before 8 p.m., the man became angry and began beating her, tried to strangle her and threatened to kill her, police said.The man fled when police arrived. A half-hour later, an officer on routine patrol saw a couple outside the Starting Gate Lounge in the 3400 block of Laurel Fort Meade Road, police said.

A Loganville, Pa. woman said she did not leave her babies alone while she drove to Glen Rock to do laundry. “I left them with a baby sitter,” said Kayla Ann Rafferty, 23, of the Midway Motel on Main Street. “I never, ever leave the babies alone.” State police said they found Rafferty's 2-month-old and 1-year-old daughters alone in the motel room after receiving a report of children crying there. A caseworker from the county's Office of Children, Youth and Families took emergency custody of the babies, police said.

Howard County drug detectives arrested four people on cocaine charges during a raid on a Laurel motel room Friday night.The search and seizure warrant served at the Turf Motel in the 9800 block of Washington Blvd. at 8:15 p.m. turned up one-fourth of an ounce of crack cocaine and various drug paraphernalia, police said. The four motel room occupants were arrested on possession of cocaine and other related charges.Rickey Lee Cole, 37, of no fixed address, was being held at the Howard County Detention Center on $20,000 bond yesterday.

A trail of stolen cigarettes led county police to a Glen Burnie motel where two men were arrested on charges of breaking into a Glen Burnie restaurant and carryout establishment early yesterday. Liquor and lottery tickets were also stolen from Crab Towne USA, but it was the trail of cigarette packs that showed officers the way to the nearby Forest Motel. The stolen goods were recovered from the motel room, police said. "It was like Hansel and Gretel with those cigarettes," said Crab Towne manager Barbara Colburn, referring to the fairy tale in which the children leave trails of pebbles and bread crumbs to find their way home.

Couple facing trial arrested on PCP chargesCounty police detectives arrested a couple in a North County motel room Tuesday night and charged them with dealing PCP for the second time this year.Police said they received tips that two people were selling PCP in the northern and eastern areas of the county out of the motel room. Detectives said they searched the room Tuesday and found more than $3,000 in cash and an estimated $9,000 worth of liquid PCP. Police said the couple was counting the money when they arrived.

Baltimore County police are waiting for the autopsy results of a 42-year-old man who was found dead in a motel room on Pulaski Highway late Friday morning.Michael Ronald Trescott, who lived in a room of Pierre's Motel in the 1100 block of Pulaski Highway, was found dead at 11:45 a.m. after residents complained to the management of a foul odor coming from the room.When police arrived, they found Mr. Trescott's badly decomposedbody sitting up in bed next to his girlfriend. Although she was unconscious when police arrived, she is still alive, investigators said.

A 44-year-old Virginia man was fatally shot yesterday morning in a room at a Holiday Inn in Jessup, the result of a "simple lover's triangle," Howard County police said.The victim, a Richmond area resident whose identity was not released pending notification of relatives, was found dead about 10 a.m. in a fourth-floor room of the motel at U.S. 1 and Route 175 after another person reported hearing gunshots.The victim had been shot at least once in the chest, said Sgt. Gary Gardner, a police spokesman.

Police were investigating a report yesterday that a woman had been bound and held for three days at a Baltimore County motel. The 36-year-old woman told police about 7:30 a.m. yesterday that she had just freed herself after a man had held her for three days in a room at the Regal Inn in the 8000 block of Pulaski Highway in Rosedale, police said. The woman had injuries on her wrists, and was taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center. Officers found a 40-year-old man in the motel room and arrested him on warrants charging him in an unrelated assault and a burglary, police said.

Already in the news is the brewing fight between Democrats and Republicans over what Congress should do about the expiring Bush tax cuts. Whether or not the richest Americans continue to get a break on income taxes will endlessly rivet cable television's talking heads and Washington politicos before the midterm elections, but the issue is not going to engage many Americans lower down on the income pyramid. The simmering anger driving voters this election season concerns jobs — good jobs — and a growing frustration that the country's leaders don't have a plan to resurrect the American dream.

A Columbia teenager must serve 25 years in prison for two crimes atop the 55 years he's already serving for a 2006 murder, a Howard County judge ruled Thursday. All of Monti Mantrice Fleming's crimes — the murder, a shooting and an armed robbery — occurred during a short period when he was 15. Howard County Circuit Judge Louis A. Becker agreed to recommend Fleming, who had a long juvenile record before his more serious crimes, for consideration for admission to Patuxent Institution's Youthful Offender Program, agreeing with defense attorney Joseph Murtha's assertions that his client has matured some and has been trying to change his outlook while behind bars in a state maximum-security prison in Cumberland.

January is a month full of memories and meaning in Memphis, Tenn., a city with strong connections to two American kings, Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis Aaron Presley, both of whom were born this month. They loom large in our collective consciousness, but their presence is heightened in this slow Southern city by the mighty Mississippi River across from Arkansas. Plenty of people tell you about the songs and the speeches. Folks call them by their first names, as if they knew one or the other.

Police were investigating a report yesterday that a woman had been bound and held for three days at a Baltimore County motel. The 36-year-old woman told police about 7:30 a.m. yesterday that she had just freed herself after a man had held her for three days in a room at the Regal Inn in the 8000 block of Pulaski Highway in Rosedale, police said. The woman had injuries on her wrists, and was taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center. Officers found a 40-year-old man in the motel room and arrested him on warrants charging him in an unrelated assault and a burglary, police said.

With its current production of Fool for Love, Bay Theatre Company begins its fourth season of offering solid, thought-provoking drama interpreted by strong actors who explore passion and despair. Playwright Sam Shepard's Fool for Love premiered off Broadway in 1983, earning an Obie Award for Ed Harris, the original Eddie. Still cutting-edge, this drama affords producing artistic director Lucinda Merry-Browne and co-director Janet Luby a thoughtful work that has not received its deserved exposure, and it is sure to engage its audience.

A 33-year-old Columbia man was charged in connection with an attack on three teen-agers in a Jessup motel in which a girl and boy were forced at knifepoint to perform sex acts with each other and the girl was raped, Howard County police said yesterday. Thomas A. Woodson of the 9000 block of Queen Maria Court in Long Reach village was arrested near the Cedar Motel in Jessup and charged with rape; multiple counts of first- and second-degree assault and false imprisonment; and making a false statement to police, court documents said.

Jamie Bowen starts his two-job, 16-hour workday with a mile walk from the old Pin-Del Motel on U.S. 1 every morning. He builds greenhouses for eight hours, and then he manages a laundromat for eight more. Then he walks home. Bowen, 24, has to earn the $220-a-week rent for the motel room he shares with his three children, Faith, 2 months, Aaron, 17 months, and Jamie Jr., 3, and their mother, Jody Darnell, 24. From Laurel to Elkridge along U.S. 1, and occasionally in newer, extended-stay motels in Columbia, a handful of working-poor families are clinging to the last rungs of America's economic ladder.

Baltimore County police shot and killed a man suspected of shoplifting a $10 bottle of liquor yesterday morning after he pointed what turned out to be a pellet gun in their direction, police said. Phillip James Lamberson, 44, who lived at the Vagabond Motel on Pulaski Highway near Harford County, died of a single gunshot wound to the torso at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, said Lt. Kevin Novak, a police spokesman. Lamberson was shot in or near the doorway of his motel room, a short walk from the liquor store where a clerk said he stole a fifth of Jim Beam about 8:20 a.m. He had slashed his wrists before he confronted the officers, Novak said.

A trail of stolen cigarettes led county police to a Glen Burnie motel where two men were arrested on charges of breaking into a Glen Burnie restaurant and carryout establishment early yesterday. Liquor and lottery tickets were also stolen from Crab Towne USA, but it was the trail of cigarette packs that showed officers the way to the nearby Forest Motel. The stolen goods were recovered from the motel room, police said. "It was like Hansel and Gretel with those cigarettes," said Crab Towne manager Barbara Colburn, referring to the fairy tale in which the children leave trails of pebbles and bread crumbs to find their way home.