Service Station

At the city's request, BP has suspended plans to construct a service station on the site of a closed supermarket in the 4600 block of Liberty Heights Ave., a spokesman for the oil company confirmed yesterday. Residents, who rallied at the site in the fall to highlight the need for a grocery store and to rebuff the BP agenda, welcomed the delay. Elton Jacquette, president of the Howard Park Civic Association, said yesterday that he intends to meet next week with representatives from a locally owned grocery chain to discuss opening a store at that location.

LOS ANGELES -- Once upon a time, there was a place called the gas station. When your car was running low on fuel, you went there. Gas stations were simple places; a couple of pumps out front, selling regular and high test, an air hose, a water hose, a Coke machine and a garage with a small office attached. When you pulled up to a gas station, an attendant would come out, usually the owner's son, or dimwitted cousin, and he would pump your gas. Then he would clean your windshield and offer to check your oil. You knew the attendant's name because it was embroidered on his greasy blue jumpsuit.

Telling lawmakers that they are in a struggle for survival, independent service station owners from around Maryland packed an Annapolis hearing room yesterday and pleaded for protection against what they called "predatory pricing" by large retail chains. The dealers urged a House committee to approve legislation that would ban their rivals from pricing gasoline below cost - a tactic they say is being used to drive them out of business. "We are not dinosaurs and we do not expect to become extinct," station owner Melvin Sherbert told the Economic Matters Committee, which fell one vote short of approving similar legislation last year.

FINKSBURG - Two men held up a gas station Friday night and made off with an undetermined amount of cash, state police said. Shortly after 10 p.m., two robbers entered the Sandymount Amoco station in the 2100 block of Baltimore Blvd. One man ordered a cashier to open the cash register while the other pointed a handgun at the cashier, police said. The cashier turned over the money and the men fled.

WHEN JERRY Shifflett called me the other night I assumed he wanted to discuss our usual topic, kids basketball. Jerry and I coach a team that our sons play on in the Towsontowne Recreation League for 13- to 15-year-old boys. As anyone involved with kids basketball knows, before every game there is a flurry of phone calls in which the coaches talk about which players might show up, who is sick, who needs a ride. We did some of that, confirming that a game that should have been played last Sunday would instead be played this afternoon.

A man accused of robbing a New Windsor convenience store was found guilty yesterday in Carroll County Circuit Court. Leonard Carville Schisler, 20, of the 2500 block of Marston Road in New Windsor was convicted of armed robbery, use of a handgun in a felony, first-degree burglary and fleeing arrest. He robbed a New Windsor convenience store in March 1999 and stole a large amount of cash and jewelry from the Mount Airy home of his cousin's fiance in June 1999, according to the statement of facts read by prosecutor Clarence W. Beall III. He also evaded Maryland State Police after stealing gas from a Woodbine 7-11 in May. Sara Ann Hartman, Schisler's accomplice in the incidents, testified against Schisler in last week's trial.

As gasoline prices in Maryland reached their all-time high yesterday, some service station dealers said they were seeing an increase in "gas and dash" - customers who drive away from the pumps without paying. In Salisbury, drive-offs have become so frequent that police have advised service station and convenience store owners to keep a closer watch on their pumps. "We found the gas drive-offs was causing our theft rate to go up," said Lt. Elmer Davis, of the Police Department's community affairs office.

Warning that the days of "Gasoline Alley" might be numbered, Maryland service station dealers asked legislators yesterday to protect them from the cut-rate gas pricing of large-volume chain stores like Sheetz, Wawa and Wal-Mart. But with consumers grumbling about soaring gas prices, members of the House Economic Matters Committee reacted warily to the dealers' appeal for legislation outlawing below-cost gasoline sales. "If we do not do something to preserve the gas station as it used to be, you'll see many boarded-up stations out there," warned Mike Ingle, president of the Service Station Dealers Association and owner of an Amoco station in Bowie.

Three men were fatally shot last night in separate incidents in Baltimore, police said. About 11: 09 p.m., two men in a car pulled into a service station in the 3300 block of Erdman Ave. in Northeast Baltimore, said Lt. Ben Lieu of the homicide squad. A man who had been shot got out of the vehicle and collapsed. He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The other man, who also had been shot, died in the car, Lieu said. Also, an unidentified man was fatally shot about 11: 07 p.m. in the 5100 block of Lodestone Way, about a mile east of the gas station, Lieu said.