Police Officer Shot

Nearly 11 hours after a city police officer shot and killed a 14-year-old who fled to avoid being arrested in a car theft, Western District police told the boy's mother her son had been arrested and taken to a juvenile detention center, the woman said yesterday.Myra Green, the mother of Simmont Donta Thomas, said that she did not learn about her son's death until she called the state medical examiner's office around noon."I said something ain't right because I called Hickey [the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for delinquents]

On Oct. 20, a city police officer shot and wounded a man near an elementary school after chasing him to a breezeway, where he was found crouched with his hands under a black jacket. He threw the jacket at the officer, who shot him in the leg. If this shooting happened the way police said it did, it will probably be ruled justified by department investigators. Perhaps it already has been found "within policy." Chances are, you and I will never know much more about the case. The department's new public affairs director, Anthony Guglielmi, has decided that identities of officers who shoot people will no longer be made public, at least until after all reviews are completed and then only if the officers' actions are deemed unjustified.

A Baltimore County police officer shot and killed the sword-wielding uncle of an attempted-murder suspect Thursday, authorities said, in a bizarre end to a case that began when a teen was found in a Howard County field last month with a gunshot wound to the head. Police said the man, Ronald Melvin Cox, 48, swung a large sword at tactical officers as they entered an upstairs bedroom in his home in the 400 block of Highmeadow Road in Reisterstown. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A voice echoes off the marble walls of the cavernous War Memorial Building. On this hallowed ground, where the heroes of battle are memorialized, a man in uniform is speaking of a high calling, a mission filled with duty, honor and sacred trust. Of a war being fought on the streets of Baltimore.Bryan Ruth stands at rapt attention in his dark blue uniform, his arms stiff at his side. His face is expressionless as he listens to an officer addressing graduates of the city's police academy. Like his 46 classmates, Ruth is a new soldier headed for the front.

A Baltimore Police officer was shot in the arm by a Baltimore County officer Monday afternoon while in Odenton serving a warrant with a law enforcement task force, police said. The city officer, who was not identified, was shot at about 2:15 p.m. in the 100 block of Pinecove Ave., in a townhouse community east of Fort Meade, officials said. The injury was described as a "through and through" wound and was not considered life threatening, though he was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center as a precaution.

A Baltimore police officer shot and killed a man in Northwest Baltimore early Sunday after witnessing a domestic assault, police said. Police officers identified the man Sunday night as Michael Wudtee, 38, of the 8600 block of Greens Lane. Between midnight and 1 a.m., officers were patrolling the area of the 4600 block of Liberty Heights Ave. in the Howard Park neighborhood. There, officers witnessed a domestic assault taking place in the parking lot of a gas station, police said.

Stunned dog owners and residents of a Severn neighborhood are shocked that authorities won't be charging a federal police officer who shot and killed a Siberian husky Monday night at a community dog park. Bear-Bear, a brown and white husky that was about 3 years old, was playing in the Quail Run dog park at about 6:30 p.m., running off leash inside the fenced-in area, when the officer and his wife arrived with a German shepherd, who was kept on a leash. When the dogs began to play roughly, the federal officer asked Bear-Bear's guardian, his owner's brother, to call off the dog. But before he could do anything, the officer pulled out a gun and shot Bear-Bear, according to the husky's owner.

A Baltimore City police officer was shot and a stolen car suspect killed by another police officer early today in the Highlandtown section of Southeast Baltimore. The name of the wounded officer and that of the dead suspect were not immediately available. Details early today were sketchy, but police said an officer assigned to the Southeastern District stopped a car in the 600 block of S. Highland Ave. near Foster Avenue about 12:35 a.m. The officer believed the car was stolen and was attempting to remove the driver from the car when the driver pulled a gun and shot the officer at least once in the leg. Other police who had arrived on the scene as back-up units pulled their service semiautomatic weapons.

A man was killed and a Baltimore police officer was shot in the leg yesterday evening during a shootout just south of the Orangeville Industrial Area in East Baltimore, police said. About 10:30 p.m., members of the citywide SWAT team on routine patrol were among police searching for a man who, for no apparent reason, had abandoned a vehicle and was eluding officers, said acting Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. Bealefeld, who arrived at Maryland Shock Trauma Center shortly after the officer was brought in, said members of a SWAT team were in the 600 block of N. Bouldin St. looking for the man when they spotted him hiding under a van parked in front of several rowhouses on a normally quiet street.