Rifle

Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly ruled yesterday that the fatal shooting of a teen-ager by his 14-year-old brother Jan. 11 was accidental and that no charges would be filed.James Ashby, 13, was killed when a rifle held by his brother, Jerry Ashby Jr., discharged in the bedroom of their home in the 700 block of Craigs Corner Road.Cassilly said the boys were home with an 18-year-old sister and her infant when they took one of the family's rifles from a gun cabinet. He said the older brother believed he had unloaded the rifle at the time it discharged, fatally striking the younger teen-ager.

A 30-year-old Baltimore County man was arrested last night after a standoff of more than two hours that began when he pointed a rifle at police and an officer shot at him, police said.Sgt. Kevin Novak, a county police spokesman, said two men were fighting about a woman outside a house in the 7600 block of Old Battle Grove Road in North Point about 7 p.m. when one of them ran inside and got a small-caliber rifle.Police were called, and the man pointed the rifle at three officers who arrived to investigate, Novak said.

NAGANO, Japan -- Would the biathlon competitors please check their weapons at the door?That about sums up the plight of the world's greatest cross country skiers and target shooters at the Winter Olympics. They have come to a land of tight gun control laws, and they have been temporarily disarmed.Their .22-caliber rifles are headed for a double lockup. Their ammunition has been cataloged right down to the last bullet.And if they want to practice -- or compete -- they've got to undergo an eye scan to retrieve their guns.

A racetrack security guard killed a woman friend before turning a rifle on himself, ending a standoff with Howard County police early yesterday at the woman's home, police said.Police said Joanne Elizabeth Olmert, 35, also a racetrack worker, died in the driveway of her home in the 7700 block of Sharewood Drive in Jessup after being shot Friday night.Her assailant, James Charles Campbell, 37, of the 7700 block of Helen Way in Elkridge, was found dead inside the house several hours later, police said.

The next couple of weeks are sort of a nothing period for local sportsmen.Hunting is just about over, and it's still too cold for most types of fishing. That's why I always reserve this time of the year for re-loading my rifle and shotgun ammo in preparation for warm weather woodchuck hunting, target shooting, trap, skeet and sporting clays shooting, and early fall's doves.I have been an active shooter practically all of my life and the only way that I have been able to shoot as often as possible is by loading my own ammo.

As a boy, Russell Calder first shot a rifle in countryside trash heaps and stone quarries, popping soda cans and handmade targets propped up with old telephone books.But nowadays, firing a gun in the suburbs is a sure way to startle neighbors and get a visit from the police, says the 34-year-old ex-Marine from Baltimore.So this hunting season Calder is perfecting his aim at Carroll County's shooting range, where for $7 a day he can unload as many rounds as he likes with no fear of neighbors or police.

County police charged a 41-year-old Severn woman with pointing a rifle at her 14-year-old daughter Tuesday after an argument over the girl's skipping school.Miata Aytch, 41, of the 1800 block of Richfield Drive, was charged with first- and second-degree assault.Police said the woman told them she pointed the rifle at the girl "to scare her."Western District officers were dispatched to the Richfield Drive house about 2: 30 p.m. While officers were on their way, a dispatcher told them that a female had been yelling into the phone and that they could hear a struggle in the background before the phone went dead, police said.

25 years ago The Taneytown Council, faced with its own reservations and petition-bearing residents, turned down the proposed shopping center for Taneytown at its February meeting and drew a caution from developer Robert Bankert to carefully weigh "precedent-settling" decisions. -- The Carroll Record, Feb. 10, 1972.50 years ago Westminster and the surrounding community was very much interested in the Junior Town Meeting, broadcast over station WBAL on Tuesday afternoon. In summing up the half-hour discussion, Mr. Eaton said that he felt the main point had been brought out by Thomas Holmes Jr., when he said, "These things we have said put forth a challenge, a challenge to us, the teen-agers of today, who will in the near future have families of our own and also should strive to rebuild and protect our American family life."

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- One of the two sniper rifles that U.S. authorities suspect were to be used in a plot to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro was purchased by the president of the Cuban American National Foundation, the Miami Herald has learned.Francisco Hernandez, CANF's second-highest ranking official, bought the weapon in 1994, according to FBI records. The second rifle was bought by Miami exile Juan Evelio Pou, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, FBI records say.The two .50-caliber rifles, capable of firing a flat-trajectory bullet for nearly one mile, were seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on Oct. 27 aboard a Miami-based yacht carrying four Cuban exiles off the northwest coast of Puerto Rico.

Two Westminster brothers, 8 and 14, are awaiting a juvenile hearing after they were arrested on charges of burglary, stealing two rifles and related offenses, police said.The boys were arrested Wednesday afternoon after police were called to Ain't That A Frame, a downtown art gallery and framing shop where a burglary was reported in progress, said Lt. Randy Barnes, a Westminster police spokesman.When police arrived about 3: 15 p.m., they found the boys being held by store employees, who reported seeing the 8-year-old walking from a storage area with a .22-caliber rifle protruding from his pants leg, Barnes said.

A man who was shot by a city policeman during a foot chase Wednesday night in the Better Waverly neighborhood - when he was about to point an SKS Chinese semiautomatic rifle at the officer - has died, said a police spokesman. Agent Donny Moses, the spokesman, said the man was shot once in the abdomen by the officer and died at 2:15 a.m. yesterday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The man's name is being withheld until family members are notified, Moses said. The officer was not hurt. The pursuit began about 9:20 p.m. Wednesday when Northern District officers assigned to the district's gang squad responded to a report of illegal activity near a park in the 2700 block of Greenmount Ave. When the officers approached a man carrying a duffel bag, he fled and was pursued down several streets and alleys, Moses said.

Baltimore police arrested a man carrying a semiautomatic rifle aboard a train yesterday morning after a cabdriver flagged down officers and said the man was headed to Washington. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said the man, identified as 25-year-old Asa Seeley, mentioned the White House but made no specific threats, though police notified the Secret Service as a precaution. Bealefeld briefed Mayor Sheila Dixon about the incident, pulling her out of a Board of Estimates meeting.

The fatal shooting last weekend of a Baltimore County couple and two of their sons, allegedly at the hands of their eldest son, is not the first gun tragedy to have visited their extended family. More than three decades ago, the sister of the father killed last week in Cockeysville was shot dead in an apparent accident in their Howard County home. Victoria Lynn Browning, then a 15-year-old Howard High School sophomore, died after being shot with a .22-caliber rifle held by her teenage brother, Lee Browning, according to a news report from the time.

A man who escaped from Harford County authorities Jan. 24 and has left several stolen vehicles in his wake may have reached Alabama, where police recovered a stolen vehicle linked to him and believe he stole another there containing a rifle. Terrance Kassis Washington, 31, charged with bank robbery, was on his way to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center from the county detention center in Bel Air when he slipped out of his handcuffs, leg irons and belly chain and fled. Within hours, police said, Washington stole at least two vehicles in the county and another in Virginia as he headed south.

A Severn teenager will be sentenced to 15 years in prison as a result of his plea yesterday in the fatal shooting a 15-year-old runaway girl for no apparent reason. Deante Littlejohn, 17, entered an Alford plea to second-degree murder before Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Philip T. Caroom, meaning that he did not admit guilt but conceded that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him of shooting Keisha Lane on Aug. 17, 2005. The girl had run away from foster care in Hagerstown to the home of a friend near Severn.

A 39-year-old Hagerstown man was sentenced in federal court in Baltimore yesterday to 15 years in prison for being a convicted felon in possession of a rifle. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett increased the sentence for Charles A. Spigler after finding that Spigler was an armed career criminal based on his three prior felony convictions. According to the statement of facts presented at his guilty plea in October, Spigler asked another man in June to pawn a rifle for him. The man took a Marlin .22-caliber rifle to a pawnshop in Hagerstown and received $40, court papers show.

The two friends hung out at least twice a week. Brian O'Neil Jones, a popular high school coach, and Alfred Winborne Jr., a mortgage consultant, bonded on the basketball court eight years before they were together for the last time one night in November 2005. The two had just left a bar on a well-lighted street in Canton about 1:30 a.m. when a man approached them carrying a rifle with a scope. Winborne, testifying this week in the Baltimore Circuit Court trial of the man charged with killing Jones, said the armed man yelled a profanity and then fired four shots as the two friends ran in opposite directions.

The Harford County Sheriff's Office has determined that a shooting in Abingdon on Tuesday that left a 34-year-old woman hospitalized was accidental. Julie Ann Reall sustained a single gunshot wound to her chest when a loaded rifle discharged as she cleaned a closet at her home on Timothy Drive. The rifle is one several firearms owned by Reall's live-in boyfriend that police found at the residence. The boyfriend, whom police declined to identify, told investigators that he did not know the rifle was loaded.

Howard County police arrested and charged three men Wednesday in the robbery of a Jessup hotel in which a sawed-off rifle was used. Police said that Terrance Eugene Davis, 20, of Pitts Place in Washington, Joe Vincent Smith, 21, of Eighth Street in Washington and Jonathan James Loston, 31, of Mandan Road in Greenbelt have been charged in the theft of an undisclosed amount of money from the Holiday Inn at U.S. 1 and Route 175 shortly after midnight....

Howard County police arrested and charged three men yesterday in the robbery of a Jessup hotel in which a sawed-off rifle was used. Police said that Terrance Eugene Davis, 20, of Pitts Place in Washington, Joe Vincent Smith, 21, of Eighth Street in Washington and Jonathan James Loston, 31, of Mandan Road in Greenbelt have been charged in the theft of an undisclosed amount of money from the Holiday Inn at U.S. 1 and Route 175. A patrol officer noticed a...