Prince George

Two elderly people were killed yesterday when their car left Interstate 495 near College Park, went down an embankment and crashed head-on into a tree, Maryland State Police reported.They said the deaths brought to 113 the number of people killed on Maryland roads so far this year, compared with 120 at the same time last year.Police said that about 2:50 p.m., Yun Sam Park, 77, of the 8000 block of Wingate Drive in Glen Dale, Prince George's County, was driving a 1990 Oldsmobile south on I-495 near Interstate 95 when the car drifted off the wet pavement, went down an embankment and crashed head-on into a tree.

Charity casino operators in Prince George's County have persuaded local legislators who should know better to lift a moratorium on gambling permits. The predictable outcome has been a surge of applications that would more than double the number of players in a business that is easily corrupted. Charity gambling gives legitimate groups a way to bankroll their good works. But it also opens the door to games run by unsavory casino operators masquerading as charities.The scandals and indictments that rocked the county just a few years ago apparently have been forgotten.

A man suspected of robbing nearly a dozen banks in the Baltimore-Washington region was captured yesterday morning at a hotel in Prince George's County, authorities reported. Detectives from Montgomery and Prince George's counties arrested Christopher Michael Cline, 28, at 6 a.m., Montgomery County police said, but they did not identify the hotel. Police from a variety of jurisdictions, as well as the FBI, had been searching for and distributing pictures of Cline, whose last known address was in Gaithersburg.

LANDOVER - A 20-year-old Landover man was shot and critically wounded yesterday by Prince George's County police after he allegedly opened fire on two officers. Police say the officers responded to a call of a man with a gun in the 3400 block of Dodge Park Road around 6:35 p.m. A man standing in a parking lot there fired, police said, and the officers returned fire, hitting the suspect in the head and abdomen. The suspect, identified by police as James Anthony Williams, was taken to Prince George's Hospital Center, where he was in critical condition last night.

A 32-year-old man was killed yesterday afternoon when his car was struck head-on by a Mercedes-Benz that crossed the center line of Piscataway Road in Clinton, Prince George's County police reported.Killed in the crash was Donald W. Overby, 32, of Mechanicsville in St. Mary's County. Police said Mr. Overby was driving a 1987 Oldsmobile east on Piscataway Road about 2:40 p.m. when the westbound 1989 Mercedes crossed the center line and collided with his car.The driver of the Mercedes, Carolyn DeVaughn, 35, of Clinton, was in critical condition at Southern Maryland Hospital.

A Prince George's County Police Department trainee is missing.Police said William, a male German shepherd and member of the police dog corps, ran away from its handler yesterday while undergoing suitability training near Dille Drive, between Brown Station and Ritchie Marlboro roads in Upper Marlboro.William weighs 125 pounds, is black and tan and was not wearing a collar, police said. They said anyone who finds the dog should not attempt to detain it but rather should call county police at 301-336-8800.

Havre de Grace. -- The motto of Prince George's County is Semper Eadem, meaning ''Always the Same.'' It's another illustration of the principle that history eventually makes every motto-writer's work look foolish.When Prince George's was 40 or 50 years younger it was still a tobacco-and-tidewater county, rural and conservative, and as resistant to change as the words on the county seal suggest. Now it's Maryland's largest jurisdiction, having quietly eased past shrinking Baltimore since the 1990 census, and badly needs a new motto.

The Brandywine Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office, a former military hazardous waste storage site in southern Prince George's County, has been added to the federal Superfund list of contaminated sites, the Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday.The Air Force has been working since 1988 to clean up the 8-acre site in Andrews, upstream of Mattawoman Creek, a prime recreational fishing spot. From at least the 1950s through the 1980s, Defense Department agencies stored electrical equipment and hazardous chemicals there.

A Prince George's County Democrat assumed the chairmanship of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus last night, succeeding former Sen. Larry Young of Baltimore.Del. Carolyn J. B. Howard, who had been vice chairman, was selected to serve the remainder of Young's term, which expires June 30.Young was expelled from the Senate on Jan. 16 for apparent violations of state ethics laws.Howard has been in the House of Delegates since 1988.Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden, a Baltimore Democrat, will serve as vice chairman, Howard said.