Restraining

Bowling Brook Preparatory School officials said yesterday that its staff "followed all appropriate restrictive procedures" in handling Isaiah Simmons III, 17, who died after reportedly losing consciousness while being restrained by staff last week at the private residential center for juveniles. "When Isaiah became threatening, our staff responded for his safety and the safety of others," said a statement by the school yesterday, the first public comment by the Carroll County facility since Simmons' death Tuesday.

A District Court judge denied a request yesterday from a former member of the PTA Council of Baltimore County to extend a temporary restraining order against the former president of the organization. Judge Alexandra N. Williams denied the petition after Roxanne Umphery-Lucas did not appear for the hearing in Towson. In her request for the temporary restraining order that was granted Jan. 19, Umphery-Lucas, 43, of Owings Mills accused former PTA Council President Michael C. Franklin of stalking and threatening her. She alleged that he slashed her car tires in May, threatened to burn down her house and committed "mail theft," court and police records show.

At least four youths at a private residential program for juvenile offenders have independently told their lawyers that they witnessed staff members sit on a struggling Isaiah Simmons for three hours Tuesday until he passed out and died, Maryland's chief public defender said last night. The statement by Nancy Forster came after a Baltimore judge ordered three city youths removed from the Bowling Brook Preparatory School in response to an emergency request by public defenders. The emergency hearings will continue next week across the state, Forster said, until all of her office's clients at the school have had their cases reviewed by a juvenile court.

Ex-PTA Council member seeks restraining-order extension against man A former member of the PTA Council of Baltimore County is seeking a restraining order against the former president of the organization, accusing him of stalking and threatening her, court records show. A hearing is scheduled for this morning in District Court in Towson on the request to extend a temporary order against former PTA Council President Michael C. Franklin. In the temporary order filed Jan. 19, Franklin, 47, of Randallstown, was barred from having contact with Roxanne Umphery-Lucas, who alleges that Franklin slashed her car tires in May, and that he has threatened to burn her house down, court and police documents show.

Sheriff's deputies and state police are investigating the death of a 17-year-old East Baltimore youth who collapsed Tuesday evening while being restrained by staff at a privately run residential program for juvenile offenders. Isaiah Simmons III was pronounced dead at Carroll Hospital Center after paramedics found him in cardiac arrest at the Bowling Brook Preparatory School near Westminster, officials said. Staff at the school attempted to subdue the youth after an outburst in which he allegedly threatened to harm other students and school personnel, according to the Carroll County Sheriff's Office.

Saying he cannot get The Examiner to stop throwing unwanted papers in his driveway each morning, a Baltimore lawyer has asked the Baltimore County Circuit Court for a temporary restraining order to force an end to the deliveries. "They're trespassing, technically," said Joel L. Levin, referring to the carriers who deliver the papers in his Pikesville neighborhood. Almost a month ago, he said, he began calling the paper's circulation department to have them stopped, but they keep coming.

In the 182 years since Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was premiered, it has never lost its ability to stir the senses. Unfortunately, the last movement's message of joy and brotherhood has always fallen largely on deaf ears. The world is about as far away from elysian contentment as it was when the composer envisioned such a daring way of conveying it - by stretching the boundary of what had been considered an all-instrumental genre and crowning his symphony with a choral explosion of goodwill and optimism.

U.S. military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some of them were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said. In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward.

I'M CONSTANTLY appalled at how horribly we treat our furry friends. Dogs may be our best friends, but I wonder if we're theirs. I see dogs hanging out of windows or sitting in drivers' laps, even as the vehicle is hurtling down the road at 70 mph. Dogs riding in the back of pickup trucks face even more danger - a careless swerve will send them to doggy heaven. Pets belong in back seats and in made-for-pets restraining systems - for their safety and yours, too. You don't want Rover to soar through the front windshield if you stop short.

A temporary restraining order that blocked the scheduled closure of the Ev-Mar Mobile Home Park in Savage on Wednesday is scheduled for a hearing in Howard County Circuit Court today. Lawyers for the owners of the 6.8-acre park, on Gorman Road near U.S. 1, gave notice 13 months ago that the park would close June 1 to prepare the land for redevelopment, but seven families living there engaged Civil Justice Inc., a public interest law firm, to argue that the closure violates Maryland laws and that their evictions are in retaliation for residents' opposing a zoning change on the land.