Police Spokesman

Officer V. Richard Molloy, the county police spokesman who for the past decade has fielded questions from the press all hours of the day and night about homicides, car accidents and other mayhem, said yesterday he may retire in August.The 24-year veteran said his decision hinges on County Council approval of an early-retirement incentive package proposed by County Executive Robert R. Neall that would allowcounty employees to retire early without penalty and also increase their pension.The proposal is expected to be introduced to the council April 20. If the plan passes, Molloy said he will retire two years earlier than he had planned.

A tractor-trailer that flipped on the Bay Bridge last week was carrying a load too light for the gusty conditions, a situation made worse when the trailer's soft canvas wall caught the wind like a sail, transportation authorities said Friday. "The vehicle shouldn't have been there," said Sgt. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police. The truck's driver, James T. Savage Jr., 53 of Owings Mills, received a $90 citation for failing to obey highway signs warning of wind restrictions on the bridge, Green said.

A Baltimore police spokesman has been suspended as the department looks into an allegation that he inadvertently sent a nude photo of a woman to a television station. Officer Troy Harris, a nine-year veteran who has served as one of the department's spokesmen since 2002, was suspended Friday by the director of the public affairs section and the police commissioner, the agency confirmed. Officials declined to comment further, saying that the issue is a personnel matter. Sources said Harris was trying to send a mug shot of a criminal suspect to a newsroom e-mail account at WBAL-TV on Thursday night and attached a cell phone photo of a woman that had been saved to the hard drive of his city-issued computer.

A 29-year-old woman was raped Thursday morning in the 3700 block of Greenmount Ave. in North Baltimore, police said. The victim said she woke up in her bed just after 4:30 a.m. with a man standing over her, said police spokesman Detective Kevin Brown. The man sexually assaulted her and fled, Brown said. Two children were home, asleep, during the incident and were not harmed. Police ask anyone with any information about this crime to call Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7LOCKUP.

A regional manhunt continued last night for three men wanted in the fatal shooting of an off-duty Baltimore County police officer during a morning robbery at a Pikesville jewelry store. Sgt. Bruce A. Prothero, 35, who was working as a security guard at the store, was pronounced dead at Sinai Hospital about noon, 45 minutes after the shooting. The decorated 12-year veteran was married with five young children, including triplets. County police say he is the fifth officer to die in the line of duty in the department's 126-year history.

A Maryland State Police trooper has been suspended with pay after being charged with drunken driving while operating her unmarked patrol car, state police said yesterday. Tfc. Susan G. Smith, a 17-year veteran investigator assigned to the North East barracks, was not on duty when she was accused of drinking and driving in Delaware this month, police said. She was charged Wednesday by Delaware state troopers and was released pending trial, which has not been scheduled. Smith had been driving in her assigned vehicle when she collided with a UPS truck in Delaware on Route 71 near Townsend just before noon June 2, according to police.

Police continued to search yesterday for the two remaining suspects in the death of a Baltimore County police sergeant, including the alleged triggerman, who was being sought by police at the time of the shooting for escaping from home detention. Richard Antonio Moore, 29, of the 2000 block of E. Fayette St., escaped from home detention Jan. 11. He had been released from prison Jan. 5 after serving 2 1/2 years for a drug conviction. His brother, Wesley John Moore, 24, of the 2700 block of The Alameda, also was at large yesterday.

Police yesterday were investigating a shooting Wednesday night that injured three people - one fatally - outside a West Baltimore bar, a day after five suspected gang members were wounded in a shooting several blocks away. Sterling Clifford, a city police spokesman, said it was too early for detectives to know whether the two incidents near Edmondson Avenue and Poplar Grove Street are related. "The department has deep intelligence on gang activity in the city and criminal activity in that area," Clifford said.

A man in his early 20s was shot yesterday in Baltimore's Remington neighborhood and died later at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, a city police spokesman said. The victim, who has not been identified, was found about 1 a.m. in the 2900 block of Miles Ave., near 29th Street. Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, said the man had been shot several times. It was the city's 146th homicide this year, compared with 127 the same time last year, police said. Harris said police have no suspects and know of no motive.

For the second time in two weeks, Baltimore County police have charged a man in a decades-old rape. Lewis P. Thornton Jr., 38, of the 500 block of W. Lafayette Ave. in Baltimore was arrested and charged with first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sex offense in a 1987 attack on a 23-year-old Towson woman, police said yesterday.

At the height of the Baltimore Police Department's experiment with zero-tolerance policing in 2005, the number of people arrested reached six figures— a statistic that sparked protests and came to symbolize what critics called a misguided policy of mass arrests. Prosecutors not only criticized the arrests for minor infractions such as loitering and drinking in public, they declined to file formal charges in about a third of the cases. Now, a police commissioner armed with a strategy of more targeted enforcement of violent gun offenders has the department on track to record half as many arrests as five years ago — with the added benefit of crime going down.

A woman was raped in her Mount Vernon apartment Tuesday afternoon after unloading things from her car, a city police spokesman said. A person of interest was in police custody and being interviewed by detectives Tuesday night but no charges have been made, said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. He said the woman was moving things from her car in the 900 block of St. Paul St. when was raped. The Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association sent out several emails alert to residents of the assault.

A Hanover woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend was arrested Sunday and charged with attempted second-degree murder, reckless endangerment and assault, according to Anne Arundel County police. Officers first spoke to the boyfriend of Jenna Russell, 25, of the 1400 block of Misty Lake Court about 9 a.m. Sunday, when he went to Baltimore Washington Medical Center for treatment of stab wounds, police said. The 21-year-old Severn resident initially told police that he had been stabbed in the upper torso at a party Saturday night, and he was taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center for further treatment.

Charles A. Moss Jr. last saw his stepson about a week ago when Anthony Thomas stopped by the house where he grew up and where Moss still lives, a few blocks south of Pimlico Race Course . "He was hustling," Moss said. "He wanted some money. " He said he gave his stepson "a couple bucks" and sent him on his way. Thomas, 45, repeated this pattern every few weeks. He hadn't lived with Moss on Dupont Avenue in 25 years, and two relatives said they had no idea where Thomas spent most nights.

Baltimore City Police on Friday made an arrest in the shooting death of a 34-year-old man that happened on Sept. 30. Darius Antowon Sheppard, 31, of the 3400 block of Gwynns Falls Parkway was charged with killing Arthur Frank Peacock of the 2500 block of Ruscombe Lane, said police spokesman Detective Jeremy Silbert. Sheppard was arrested in the 900 block of W. Lexington St. on Friday, in part from community intelligence, Silbert said. the The police spokesman did not offer a motive.

A 22-year-old man was shot and killed Saturday afternoon on a Waverly street two days after an elderly man was gunned down a few blocks away, prompting neighborhood turmoil and vows from police to bolster patrols in the area. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the increase in uniformed and undercover officers in the neighborhood would begin Saturday night after the violence had business owners anxious about safety and how the crimes would hurt commerce. The shooting occurred just two blocks from a popular city farmers market that hours earlier was filled with shoppers enjoying the spring weather and the beginning of their weekend.

A man was fatally shot in the head about 8:50 p.m. yesterday at a barbershop in the 1100 block of W. Baltimore St., a police spokesman said. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, said the spokesman, Agent Donny Moses. The motive and number of suspects are unclear, he said.

A 95 year-old Ellicott City woman was found dead early yesterday in an apparent fall from a deck at the home of relatives on Tarpley Court, Howard County police said. Family members found Jung Tae Seo's body at the base of a backyard deck about 8 a.m., said Cpl. Luther Johnson, a county police spokesman. Seo lived in an assisted-living facility in Ellicott City and had been visiting her relatives. The death appeared to be accidental, police said.

State police identified the pilot who was found dead at the scene of a plane crash in Edgewater on Saturday as 53-year-old Joseph Luther Kelly III of Annapolis. Firefighters arrived at 24 Warehouse Creek Lane to find the wreckage of the single-engine 1962 V-35 Beechcraft Bonanza Model P engulfed in flames fewer than 30 feet from a house in what a police spokesman described as a sparsely populated neighborhood. The National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Maryland State Police are investigating.

After almost 14 years as the voice of the Baltimore County police, Bill Toohey will leave the department on Friday, take a week off and start a new job on Feb. 1. Toohey, a former radio reporter and spokesman for two U.S. senators, is to be the communications director for the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, which coordinates programs, grants and research for public safety and corrections agencies. "It's a great expansion of my professional world and I'm really looking forward to that," said Toohey, 64, who was informed in November that he was being let go from the Police Department to make way for a uniformed officer.