Road Rage

Maryland State Police said yesterday they are seeking a driver in an apparent road-rage shooting on southbound Interstate 795 in Owings Mills that left a Hampstead woman with a bullet wound in the foot. Just before midnight Friday, police say, a motorist pulled alongside a Chevrolet Blazer driven by Everett L. Poole, 32, of Lineboro and fired a single shot into the Blazer's passenger door, grazing the foot of passenger Josie M. Steger, 31, of Hampstead. The shooter continued south on I-795 as Poole pulled over.

Nobody except the driver of a green pickup truck knows who made the first obscene gesture on Interstate 270 yesterday morning. But after an exchange of angry gestures with the truck's driver on the busy commuter route in Frederick County, a Pennsylvania man and woman in a Chrysler Sebring were killed in the crash that followed the apparent road rage incident. The pickup's driver has not been found. The accident near Frederick occurred the same day AAA Mid-Atlantic released a survey showing that by a wide margin Maryland drivers consider aggressive drivers the biggest danger on the state's roads.

Chalk up another two lives to Driving While Angry. Last week's fatal accident on Interstate 270, in which two occupants of a Chrysler Sebring convertible were forced into and over a guardrail after exchanging obscene gestures with the driver of a pickup truck, was a particularly grisly example of the consequences of road rage. And a ridiculous reason to die. The crash left Christian M. Luciano, 28, and Lindsay L. Bender, 25, mangled and lifeless on the side of a highway in Frederick County.

Day after day, family and friends of Patrick John Walker have streamed to a makeshift memorial at the base of a tree in downtown Bel Air, lighting candles, leaving fresh flowers and notes and erecting seasonal decorations. Recently, Easter eggs replaced the shamrock-green St. Patrick's Day trinkets, placed amid a collection of photos. It was here that the 23-year-old Walker, a recent college graduate who was running errands on his way to work one Friday afternoon last May, was fatally stabbed in the neck in an incident that prosecutors say was apparently sparked by road rage.

LEAVE YOUR car, lose a kneecap. That, in short, is the lesson learned from Baltimore's latest police shooting -- a road rage, macho idiocy affair that happened just over a week ago.Here, according to police reports, is what happened.Off-duty Officer Stuart Parker was driving his van north on Charles Street around 11 p.m. Oct. 29. Apparently, he got into a tiff with a man driving a compact car. The two exchanged words as they turned right down an unspecified street and then hung another right and headed south on St. Paul Street.

JOE MADISON, you've gone too far. But you've got guts.On Monday, Madison, the superb program director of Radio One's talk stations WOL and WOLB, walked where many are reluctant to tread: He questioned whether sending Mike Tyson - the epitome of dysfunction - to jail for a year ``does any good.''Madison went even further. He suggested that Montgomery County Judge Stephen Johnson sentenced Tyson solely to get publicity. Assuming the accusation is true, it's also quite beside the point.The issue in the matter of Mike Tyson is what it always has been: the conduct of Mike Tyson.

This is not your father's interstate: Road rage may have existed then, but not on today's scale. And just appearing vulnerable on the road can mark you as a victim.So here are hints on how to steer clear of trouble, courtesy of AAA, "Safety and Security for Women Who Travel" (Travelers' Tales Guides, $12.95), and the new and sassy "The Bad Girl's Guide to the Open Road" (Chronicle Books, $14.95).Keep the gas tank at least half-full ... or is that half-empty? Whatever. The idea is to have plenty of gas so you won't run out or be forced to leave your route in search of fuel in an unsavory neighborhood.

So our governor will not allow the Manchester bypass to be built. He will not allow the Intercounty Connector to be built.He doesn't care about reducing commuters' time, gas consumption, pollution or road rage. Not Glendening only that, but in the case of the Gaithersburg-Laurel road, he's going to make sure that nobody else will build it either.This reminds me of the dog who refuses his supper, but growls at the cat who noses into his dish.Mr. Glendening needs to be reminded that he was elected to do what the people want done, not what he wants done.

An off-duty city policeman shot and wounded a motorist on a downtown street last night after both men got out of their cars during an apparent "road rage" incident.Police spokesman Angelique Cook-Hayes offered few details last night and would not release the names of either the policeman or the injured man. The wounded motorist was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital with a gunshot wound to his knee. Hospital officials would not release the man's name.Occurring only three weeks after an officer's fatal shooting of Larry J. Hubbard, a case which has spawned community protests against police brutality and a federal investigation, word of last night's shooting brought Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to the scene at about 11 p.m."

YOU KNOW what it is the average American has most to fear in life, don't you?Well, sure, it's that late some night a teen-age black male will break into his house, rob him and beat him, all as a result of uncontrollable anger over being cut off in traffic earlier in the day.The poor average American then has to be flown to a hospital for surgery, but the plane crashes. Subsequently, he is given a blood transfusion, but the blood is tainted, infecting him with the AIDS virus.In the hospital, he is infected with a flesh-eating virus carried by an illegal-alien janitor.

Anne Arundel County police are investigating an apparent road rage incident in which an Odenton man is accused of flashing a handgun at a woman who cut him off during rush hour Thursday. About 5:50 p.m., an off-duty officer stopped at what he thought was a traffic accident on Piney Orchard Parkway near Odenton Road in Odenton. But a 24-year-old woman said it was a road rage incident. She told the officer that she might have cut off another driver, who blasted his horn and, when their cars were stopped, pointed a handgun in her direction and asked whether she wanted to be shot.

Man, 40, is charged in road rage incident Maryland State Police have charged a 40-year-old Pikesville man with six counts of first-degree assault in a road rage incident on the Baltimore Beltway last month. Stephane Roger Dejean, who was arrested Tuesday, is accused of running a Chrysler PT Cruiser off the outer loop at Security Boulevard about 1 p.m. Feb. 14 while driving a 1997 Nissan Maxima, police said. The Chrysler struck a concrete jersey wall and its six occupants, including three children, suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.

A 22-year-old Randallstown man has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with a road-rage shooting that killed a 16-year-old girl and a 32-year-old man near Bolton Hill, records show. Tavon Spruell of the 3800 block of Cherrybrook Road was taken into custody Friday and ordered held without bail, according to computerized court records. Hostilities leading to the shooting began about 5:40 p.m. Feb. 27 in West Baltimore when a Ford Crown Victoria containing a man and three teens nearly collided with a Jetta that Spruell was driving, according to charging papers prepared by city homicide detective Corey Alston.

When I read a recent survey that rated Baltimore and Washington among the nation's top five cities for road rage, I thought back to a driving incident about 10 years ago. While visiting D.C. from my home in Boston, I triggered the angst of an officer who pulled me over on New York Avenue. "Did you know that you ran that yellow light back there?" the policewoman scolded while inspecting my Massachusetts driver's license. I sat momentarily stunned, my mouth wide open. Did she say yellow light?

P.M. Forni even drives with civility. He uses his turn signal religiously. He moves over for the lane-weaving knuckleheads. He waits days for pedestrians at crosswalks; they could pitch a tent, and he'd just shrug. He's St. P.M. of the Highways - at least when there's a newspaperman riding along with him. "The irony would be if you catch me doing something uncivil and ... reported it," he says with a smile. Oh, wouldn't that be something? Forni, the Johns Hopkins University professor and civility guru, flipping off someone who cuts him off and screaming, "You want a piece of me?"

A father's bedside admission A West Baltimore father told police from his hospital room that demons made him throw his son off the Key Bridge. Gang crackdown escalates Federal prosecutors announce racketeering indictments against 23 men and five women alleging drug dealing and murders in a case that could bring life sentences. Fires alarm Harford residents A wave of arsons and firebombings for the third consecutive weekend have residents on edge and the police investigating whether the incidents are related.

The two people gunned down in a road rage confrontation that began in West Baltimore and ended about a mile later in Bolton Hill were identified yesterday by police as a 16-year-old Dundalk girl and a 32-year-old Harford County man. No arrests had been made in what police said was a rare double-killing road rage incident, which began Wednesday evening with a dispute between the occupants of a green Volkswagen Jetta and a Ford Crown Victoria. A passenger in the Ford, Rebecca Meekins of the 8100 block of Mid Haven Road in Dundalk, and the driver, Edward Tyree Baylor, who lived in Harford County but had his mail delivered to his parents' home in the 5700 block of Rubin Ave. near Pimlico, were pronounced dead at Maryland Shock Trauma Center shortly after they were shot about 6 p.m. by at least one of two men in the Jetta.

An apparent case of road rage on an East Baltimore street early Christmas morning put a woman in a local hospital with a bullet wound. In addition, police were investigating at least four other nonfatal shootings that occurred yesterday throughout the city, all before noon. No arrests had been made in any of the shootings, and the victims' names were not released, police said. About 1 a.m. Christmas Day, a woman, 24, was driving in the 1700 block of Orleans St., accompanied by family members, when she was forced to stop for a silver-colored vehicle in front of her whose driver was stopped at a green light, police said.

The most compelling of the many messages in response to last week's column about road rage came without a name or return e-mail address. The unknown writer said she visited University of Hawaii psychologist Leon James' Web site, as recommended in the column. She said she "saw [herself] in some of the people described there." "Quite scary," she wrote. A particular description struck home: "In a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde effect, perfectly ordinary, friendly, good-hearted people tend to become extremely intolerant and anti-social as soon as they get behind the wheel.

Chalk up another two lives to Driving While Angry. Last week's fatal accident on Interstate 270, in which two occupants of a Chrysler Sebring convertible were forced into and over a guardrail after exchanging obscene gestures with the driver of a pickup truck, was a particularly grisly example of the consequences of road rage. And a ridiculous reason to die. The crash left Christian M. Luciano, 28, and Lindsay L. Bender, 25, mangled and lifeless on the side of a highway in Frederick County.