Odenton

A 20-year-old Odenton man who prosecutors said "has been a problem for a very long time" was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for assaulting a security guard at a Columbia apartment complex in May. Rick Delay Britton, of the 1200 block of Scotts Manor Court, was convicted in December by a Howard County Circuit Court jury of first-degree assault, use of a handgun in the commission of a violent crime and possession of a handgun. Police and prosecutors say Britton was with Derrod Peterson when Peterson attacked the security guard.

An Odenton man was in critical condition Wednesday after he was shot repeatedly in his home by masked intruders, Anne Arundel County police said. The 24-year-old man, whose identity was not released, was home in the 500 block of Williamsburg Lane about 9 p.m. Tuesday when two men entered through an unlocked door and then overpowered a 74-year-old man who was also in the house, police spokesman Justin Mulcahy said. The intruders - one with a gray knit cap pulled over his face, the other with a bandanna over the lower part of his face - fought with the 24-year-old man and his 21-year-old girlfriend, striking her with an unknown object and shooting him several times, Mulcahy said.

Anne Arundel County police identified Friday the officer involved in a shooting this week in Odenton. The officer, Cpl. Keith Doyle, who was placed on administrative leave, fired at a sport utility vehicle that was coming toward him, police said. Neither person in the vehicle was hit. About 4 a.m. Tuesday, police were investigating reports of two men breaking into vehicles in the 2000 block of Tea Island Court. When Doyle investigated, a Kia Sportage came at him and he fired, police said.

The Odenton Volunteer Fire Company wrongly rented out its social hall for an event in which two people were shot and a third was hit by a car while fleeing the violence, a lawyer for the injured partygoers said in opening remarks Tuesday to an Anne Arundel County jury. Judd Legum asked jurors to hold the fire company liable for his clients' injuries. But Senior Assistant County Attorney Hamilton Tyler said that it was not the fire company's fault that the party organizer lied on her application and that a disgruntled partygoer shot two people.

The last of three suspected gunmen in a 2008 shooting in Odenton that killed two men and wounded two others pleaded guilty Thursday in an agreement that will mean a life sentence. Damon Daryl Dodd, 32, of Baltimore, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and a handgun charge. At sentencing next month, Anne Arundel prosecutors will seek a life term, plus 20 years for the weapons conviction. Dodd's attorney, John McKenna, is expected to ask Circuit Judge William C. Mulford II for less time.

A lawsuit alleging that the ex-president of the Odenton Volunteer Fire Company sexually abused two former volunteers when they were teenage recruits and that their complaints went unheeded has ended in a six-figure settlement. "In the world of public entities, it is particularly significant settlement," said Joyce E. Smithey, attorney for the men, who were unnamed in the lawsuit against the fire company and Anne Arundel County. The settlement, reached in the spring, plus a recent end to a dispute over legal fees, wraps up a lawsuit filed in January 2008 based on allegations of sexual wrongdoing that one accuser said began in 2003, when he was 19, and the other said started in 2004, when he was 16. The lawsuit was a significant factor in the county's decision not to insure volunteer companies for anything beyond fire and rescue operation as of last July 1. "The whole thing about being an insurer is to have some say over how to limit the risk," said Anne Arundel County Attorney Jonathan Hodgson.