Security Guard

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Within the dense warren of shops and storefronts of the Shorja market ordinary life drummed along yesterday morning. Security guard Abdul-Ameer Mohammed stood at his post in front of a bank. Nail Ahmed, owner of a porcelain pottery store in the market, took a break and shopped for spices for his wife. Maytham Qazzaz, a plastics and nylon merchant, worked the phones. Then the explosions erupted, yet another in a series of attacks on crowded Baghdad marketplaces. Ordinary life became engulfed in fire, twisted metal, collapsed buildings, shattered glass, black smoke and blood.

I couldn't remember my Nixon history too well.But I sure could feel it.It was hard not to, standing in the lobby of the Howard Johnson's Hotel on Virginia Avenue, looking out the glass door to the gigantic, odd-shaped complex across the street.I didn't remember exactly where the scouts were posted that night nearly 25 years ago; it was somewhere a few floors above me. (I looked it up later: Room 723.) Still, I figured, their view would have been similar to mine. And I wondered how frantic G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt became when they looked across the avenue -- just as I was doing now -- and saw a security guard approaching their five cohorts in the office of the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate building.

A 31-year-old man who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane over the weekend remained in serious condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he allegedly threatened a security guard and was shot by Howard County police.Brian Bechtold, who was found not criminally responsible for the shotgun killings of his parents seven years ago, escaped Sunday afternoon from the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup, police said.He was shot after he threatened a security guard at Apollo Moving and Storage in the 8300 block of Sherwick Court in Savage, according to court records.

A Baltimore man -- who has tested positive for the AIDS virus -- was charged with first-degree assault after allegedly biting a security guard during a struggle at a Target Store in Frederick.Eric Orlando Glaspie, 20, of the 5000 block of Goodnow Road was charged with various counts of theft and assault. He voluntarily gave a blood sample and tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, said Deputy 1st Class Rick Winer.Frederick County Sheriff's Office officials said Glaspie went to the Target in the 5400 block of Urbana Pike at about 3: 30 p.m. Friday and presented an altered check to the clerk.

Richard Hammonds, a former steel worker, died Monday of heart failure at his West Baltimore home. He was 70.The Baltimore native worked at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant from 1953 to 1980, and later as a security guard at Rite Aid pharmacies.He served in the Army in 1945 and 1946.A private service is planned.He is survived by his wife, the former Jennifer Wisley, whom he married in 1956; a son, Edward Hammonds of New York; a daughter, Sandra Wallace of Baltimore; and three grandchildren.

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.

ONLY THE SECURITY guard involved really knows if racism motivated him to order a young black man suspected of shoplifting to take off his Eddie Bauer shirt. A Prince George's County jury was convinced the guard wrongly sent the teen-ager home without clothing he had actually purchased. The jury was convinced the Eddie Bauer company bore responsibility for the guard's actions. But the jurors were unsure what went through the guard's mind.Testimony indicated the security guard, off-duty Prince George's police officer Robert Sheehan, suspected Alonzo Jackson of shoplifting because the Eddie Bauer shirt he was wearing looked new. It was new. Mr. Jackson had purchased it the day before.

A supermarket clerk was killed and a security guard wounded at a Northeast Baltimore Giant Food store early yesterday as the guard tried to apprehend an ex-convict on probation who was suspected of shoplifting toothbrushes, police said.Twelve hours after the shooting, police arrested Charles Anthony Thomas, 28. He has faced 10 criminal charges -- all of them dropped -- since his release from prison in March on a drug conviction, according to corrections officials.A U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force found Thomas armed with a handgun and hiding in a closet of a house in the 1400 block of Edison Highway in East Baltimore.

Four men broke the windows of 14 cars and trucks parked at the Glen Burnie Holiday Inn Thursday and stole hundreds of dollars worth of property, county police said.A security guard for the hotel, in the 6300 block of Ritchie Highway, called police about 4 a.m. after he saw four men on the parking lot taking items from several cars, police said.When the security guard approached the men, they got into a white Lexus and sped away. Each of the 14 vehicles had its windows smashed, and papers and other items were strewn across the parking lot, police said.

County police arrested four people on shoplifting charges Sunday and Monday in separate incidents at Glen Burnie stores.In the first, a security guard at Wal-Mart in the 7900 block of Crain Highway stopped a man who was trying to leave without lTC paying for more than $1,000 worth of computer equipment, police said.Carl Richards, the guard, told police he saw a man load a shopping cart with a Hewlett-Packard Desk Jet printer, a Canon color printer and a soundblaster CD-ROM disk about 1 p.m. Sunday and cover the items with his jacket.

Ex-Baltimore man guilty in 1997 rape A former Baltimore man entered an Alford plea to first-degree rape, acknowledging Friday that prosecutors had evidence to convict him in the rape of a 66-year-old woman in 1997. Under terms of the plea, Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Philip T. Caroom can sentence Vander Davis, 41, to up to 30 years in prison when he returns for sentencing in December. The victim had interrupted her gardening outside her Glen Burnie home on April 30, 1997, to quiet her dog. When she went inside her house, she was raped, prosecutors said.

Wendy and Lucy is the best art-house girl-and-dog story you're ever going to see. It has the same emotional beats as a commercial girl-and-dog story - starting with girl loves dog and girl loses dog. The director, Kelly Reichardt, never hits any of the beats too hard, and though she sometimes breaks your heart, she's too wary of unearned sentiment to warm it. She uses the bond between a girl and a girl's best friend to portray what our lower-middle-class life...

A Baltimore man has sued the Ravens for copyright infringement, alleging that the franchise continues to profit from a logo that he designed in 1995. Frederick E. Bouchat, a security guard from South Baltimore, filed suit last week in U.S. District Court. The amateur artist has long claimed that he created and copyrighted the franchise's original logo. He says the Ravens copied the image and gave him no credit. In the lawsuit, he says the Ravens have continued to show the logo in various films featuring clips from the 1996, 1997 and 1998 seasons.

Man was shot, autopsy shows The autopsy of an unidentified man whose body was found yesterday morning in an abandoned West Baltimore rowhouse showed the man had been shot, and his death has been ruled a homicide, a Police Department spokesman said yesterday. It was the city's third homicide this year as of yesterday, compared with 10 for the same time last year, according to police records. About 8:30 a.m., Southwestern District police responding to a call entered a house in the 3000 block of W. North Ave. in the Walbrook community and found the man's body, said Officer Troy Harris, the spokesman.

Unaccountable and deadly, private security guards in Iraq have done so much damage to the American mission there with their shoot-early-and-often tactics that finally even the State Department, which seems to pride itself on its ability to look the other way, has realized that something has to be done to rein them in. New oversight measures approved Tuesday by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are fine as far as they go - but they don't go far enough....

11 officeholders supporting Rawlings-Blake Four Baltimore state senators and seven delegates yesterday announced their support for City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake in her bid to win a full term in the position. Endorsing Rawlings-Blake were Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, Sen. Verna L. Jones, Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden. Del. Talmadge Branch, Del. Peter A. Hammen, Del. Carolyn J. Krysiak, Del. Maggie McIntosh, Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, Del. Shawn Z. Tarrant and Del. Barbara A. Robinson.

Frederick Jerry Nance II, a skycap and security guard, died of a heart attack Sunday at his Northeast Baltimore home. He was 35. Born in Baltimore and raised in Cherry Hill, he was a 1989 graduate of Southern High School and studied business management at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. He moved to Hartford, Conn., and worked for a utility company for five years before returning to Baltimore and becoming a mechanic for Anderson Automotive. At his death, Mr. Nance was working as an American Airlines skycap and as a security officer at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel.

Cancer patient files a charge of assault against guard A cancer patient has filed an assault charge against a hospital security guard who he says yelled at him and pushed him out of a men's bathroom as he performed a Muslim cleansing ritual. Dr. Mohammed A. Hussain was washing his hands and feet in the bathroom sink when Rodney Corban, an off-duty security guard at University of Maryland Medical Center, confronted him, according to criminal and civil court papers filed by the doctor. Their encounter occurred March 22, just before Hussain was to have surgery to remove a tumor on his tongue.

Gunman shot at bank during robbery try A would-be robber was wounded yesterday morning in an exchange of gunfire with an off-duty city police sergeant inside a Wachovia Bank branch in Northeast Baltimore, authorities said. Neither the officer - a seven-year member of the Police Department moonlighting as a security guard - nor any customers or employees was injured in the encounter, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The unidentified gunman was in serious condition and under police guard last night at Sinai Hospital, said Moses, who gave this account: About 11 a.m., the gunman entered the bank in the 1700 block of E. Northern Parkway in the Loch Raven Shopping Center and announced a robbery while approaching the teller stations.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Within the dense warren of shops and storefronts of the Shorja market ordinary life drummed along yesterday morning. Security guard Abdul-Ameer Mohammed stood at his post in front of a bank. Nail Ahmed, owner of a porcelain pottery store in the market, took a break and shopped for spices for his wife. Maytham Qazzaz, a plastics and nylon merchant, worked the phones. Then the explosions erupted, yet another in a series of attacks on crowded Baghdad marketplaces. Ordinary life became engulfed in fire, twisted metal, collapsed buildings, shattered glass, black smoke and blood.