Police Station

A man claiming to be selling watches, coins and other items on Craigslist - the Internet version of classified ads - has lured four people to a residential street in Northwest Baltimore and robbed them at gunpoint, according to city police. Two attacks occurred last year, in August and November, but two others were reported to police this month. Police said they believe all the hold-ups are linked - they're occurring in mid-afternoon in the same block on Callaway Avenue, lined with single family homes and green lawns near Ashburton.

The wife of a man found stabbed in an Odenton home last year has been arrested in his murder, police said. Donna Mills Wood, 38, turned herself in at the Western District police station at approximately 4 p.m. Thursday. She was charged with the fatal stabbing of Jerome Vorden Wood, 45, inside a residence on the 100 block of Pine Cove Avenue Nov. 6, 2012. Police were called to the scene for a reported suicide and found Jerome Wood with injuries to his upper body. He died that day, and investigators later determined that he had been stabbed and ruled his death a homicide.

A loaded handgun was found in a holding cell in a Baltimore police station this week, officials confirmed after receiving inquiries from The Baltimore Sun.  The weapon, a .22 caliber handgun with six rounds in the chamber, was found by an officer as he was placing a suspect into a cell in the Southeastern District station on March 12, according to a report provided by police. The officer had entered the detainee's information in a station log book, then walked into the cell to hand back a driver's license when he noticed a black knit glove lying on a shelf.

University of Maryland, Eastern Shore officials on Monday said state police are investigating assertions that campus officers took an extended period of time to respond to the fatal stabbing of a student during homecoming weekend. Edmond A. St. Clair, 21, of Severn was stabbed on the Princess Anne campus Saturday night. St. Clair's family has said that it took too long for police to help him and that the assailants lingered at the scene after the stabbing. Campus spokesman Bill Robinson said state police are constructing a timeline.

Automated teller machine robberies are to banking what plane crashes are to transportation: High-profile, much feared -- and extremely rare.The American Bankers Association reports one ATM crime for every 3.5 million transactions, higher than the odds of being struck by lightning in a year (one in 2 million). A more independent source, the Baltimore County police, has recorded 12 ATM robberies this year, 1 percent of all county robberies. Of course, when someone is held-up at a machine near your home, you don't forget.

Deterring automated teller machine robberies is simple. Just think of the place a mugger would hate and stick a cash machine there.Like, say, a police station.Yesterday, Anne Arundel became the first county in the state to have ATMs in police station lobbies. The machines, run by the Anne Arundel County Employees Federal Credit Union, are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.Capt. Michael P. Fitzgibbons, the man who came up with the idea, called it a "no-brainer." His boss, Chief Robert A. Beck, labeled it "fantastic."

ROME -- A powerful car bomb ripped through a police station in Catania early yesterday, wounding at least four police officers, one of them seriously. The police said the bomb appeared to have been set by the Mafia.It was the second attack in Sicily attributed to organized crime in the last week. The first was the fatal shooting Wednesday night of the Rev. Giuseppe Puglisi, a staunchly anti-Mafia Roman Catholic priest, in Palermo.The explosion yesterday carved a crater 10 feet in diameter in the street in front of the police station and smashed apartments and automobiles nearby.

Howard County's new police substation in Scaggsville is decorated more like a luxurious private home than an old-fashioned precinct house -- with cushioned seats, cathedral ceilings and mahogany veneer doors."

A 19-year-old Columbia man and two companions were looking for the Howard County police station Thursday night so he could turn himself in for a violation of probation warrant, police said. A plainclothes police officer was walking in the parking lot of the Northern District station in Ellicott City when the men asked him where the police station was, police said. The officer noticed "a heavy odor of burning marijuana," according to police reports, and called other officers to the scene.

The city zoning board unanimously approved using city-owned land for construction of a Northern District police station yesterday, clearing the way for the $5.4 million project in the 2200 block of W. Cold Spring Lane.No opposition was registered at the hearing.Groundbreaking will be in the spring, said city planning director Charles C. Graves, with completion expected late next year. The city chose BCI Construction, the company with the lowest bid, for the job.An irregular-sized wooded vacant lot, 740 feet by 493 feet, will be the site of a one-story masonry building with 172 off-street parking places, city documents show.

Residents protesting a police officer shooting another resident's dog on New Year's Day staged a demonstration on Saturday outside the headquarters of the Northeast District, as the new commander there introduced himself to residents. A Baltimore police officer chased a suspect through Stacy Fields's yard in the 5500 block of Bucknell Road, and when her dog Kincaid started barking at him, the officer shot him. The dog had charged, according to a police report, and the department said the shooting was justified.

Capt. John Spiroff, commander of the Wilkens Police Station that patrolled Precinct One that includes Arbutus, Catonsville and Lansdowne, will be leaving the station next week. Spiroff has been promoted to detective captain for the Baltimore County Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division. He will be succeeded at Wilkens by Capt. Douglas Irwin, a 20-year veteran of the Baltimore County Police Department. Irwin was most recently commander of the department's Internal Affairs Division, according to Cpl. Cathleen Batton, a county police spokeswoman.

What happened to Chavis Carter? It is a pregnant question, potentially even an explosive one. Carter died of a gunshot wound to the temple on the last Saturday in July, but the question about his death has only grown louder and more urgent since then. It is beginning to gather national attention. So we need an answer soon, either so that suspicions can be put to rest and some imperfect peace achieved, or so that suspicions can be validated and some equally imperfect justice sought.

Enalee E. Bounds has been running Ellicott's Country Store on Main Street in historic Ellicott City for 50 years, telling customer after customer that they have stepped into a house that could be the oldest "duplex" in the country - built in the late 18th or early 19th century - and how Mr. Walker lived on one side, Mr. Chandler on the other. In her view, Main Street hasn't changed so much since her family bought the store in 1962, and she doesn't see why it should. "It could always be spiffed up," said Bounds, whose store boasts four floors of antiques and home furnishings and an interior design service.

The pedestrian killed in a hit-and-run accident in southern Anne Arundel County on Sunday morning has been identified as Kendrick Lamont Richardson, 37, of no fixed address, county police said Wednesday. Richardson was found dead by emergency responders on the side of northbound Solomons Island Road north of Harwood Road shortly before 7:30 a.m., and crash investigators determined that a driver of a 2003 Volkswagen Golf MK4 had struck Richardson before leaving the scene, police said.

A 20-year-old Edgewater man has come forward as the driver involved in a fatal hit-and-run in southern Anne Arundel County early Sunday, police said. Anne Arundel County police first responded to a report of an unresponsive male lying near northbound Solomons Island Road north of Harwood Road about 7:30 Sunday morning. A man was found dead on the edge of the road, the victim of a hit-and-run, police said. After police put out a news release identifying the vehicle they believed was involved, Stuart James Sohovich walked into a police station and said he may have been the driver whose vehicle struck the man, Anne Arundel County police said.

Twenty-six years ago, the police station in Taneytown moved across the street. A month ago, city officials began considering moving it back.Too late, barber Marvin Flickinger told the City Council last night at a meeting during which the move was not resolved.Flickinger said moving the police station to its former location would be a traffic hazard and would eat up parking spaces that business owners on that side of the street rely on for their customers."It's your job to correct a traffic hazard and not create one," Flickinger said.

If Robert Sisselberger quit his job at the Eastern District police station, he'd take the fun with him."We wouldn't have anyone to play peek-a-boo with," said Vanessa Turner, a custodian at the station. She supervises Mr. Sisselberger when he comes in three times a week.The 25-year-old Pasadena resident has been volunteering at the station since 1992, cleaning the community room, sweeping the halls and front stairs, bringing a smile to everyone as he dances and sings with his broom, plays peek-a-boo behind corners.

A 21-year-old man was in critical condition after being shot multiple times in the face and body early Saturday morning in Northwest Baltimore, police said. Police said the unidentified man was found suffering from gunshot wounds in the 3500 block of W. Belvedere Ave. just after 3 a.m., according to police. He was taken to an area hospital and was listed in critical but stable condition. A police spokesman said he did not have additional information, but asked anyone with information to call the Northwest District police station at 410-396-2466.

Just as the temperatures were about to soar into the 90s, Annapolis police said a city resident reported his snowball maker was apparently stolen. Police said Wednesday that a resident of the 1800 block of Robert Small Road came to the police station Monday to say that his Sno Master machine was gone from the locked storage room of his basement last Saturday. He had placed it in there in April. There were no signs of forced entry, and family members, who have access to that room, said they had no knowledge about a theft of the equipment, according to police.