Shotgun

Two men robbed a Union Bridge liquor store at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon, state police in Westminster said.Police said the men, one armed with a shotgun, entered Esquire Liquors, 5 W. Broadway, about 3 p.m. and demanded that a lone employee remove money from a register. The employee complied and the men fled after ordering the worker to lie on the floor, police said.An undetermined amount of money was stolen.The man with the shotgun had a heavy build and was clean-shaven. He was wearing dark clothing and had a stocking cap on his head.

A 59-year-old organic farmer was sentenced yesterday to a year of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine for firing a shotgun in his Baltimore County home with a former employee in the next room. James J. Dasher, owner of a nonprofit farm in Worthington Valley that provides food for Maryland soup kitchens and homeless shelters, was convicted in March of reckless endangerment. A jury acquitted him of first-degree assault, a more serious charge that stemmed from the former employee's contention that Dasher twice fired the shotgun at him while accusing him of having an affair with his fiancee.

If Gregory Lamont Howard hadn't leaned over and looked in the barely opened window of a car full of cheated and angry drug customers on Jan. 28, 1993, his life might not have been cut short by a 12-gauge shotgun.After all, Timothy Cumberland, the 23-year-old man whose girlfriend had just spent $40 on a bag of bogus crack, had already been persuaded to get himself and the shotgun he was wielding back into the car, according to testimony at Mr. Cumberland's murder trial yesterday."The defendant was getting inside the car," Keith Edward Goins, a Westminster man who acknowledged on the stand that he has sold drugs along South Center Street, testified yesterday.

Timothy Cumberland, who faces a sentence of life in prison without parole for the shotgun killing of a Westminster man last year, has asked for a new trial.Cumberland claims in the new-trial motion that crucial defense evidence was unfairly kept from the Carroll Circuit Court jury that convicted him Feb. 8 of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the Jan. 28, 1993, shotgun death of Gregory Lamont Howard on South Center Street.Michael D. Montemarano said in the motion filed last week that Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr.'s rulings on evidence and instructions to the jury "denied the defendant a fair trial."

Timothy Cumberland may have been stupid to get out of his friend's car and brandish a 12-gauge shotgun to vent his anger over being sold fake crack, but that doesn't make him guilty of murder, his attorney told a Carroll County jury yesterday."

Two men with a sawed-off shotgun robbed a Severn man while he talked on a pay phone outside a Columbia ice rink Tuesday night, police said.Christopher P. Murphy, 28, a construction worker, said he stopped at the telephone in the 5800 block of Thunderhill Road about 11:45 p.m."I was on my way home after hanging out in Columbia and I stopped to call a friend," Mr. Murphy said. "I was on the phone for two or three minutes when I saw the men coming around the side of the building."Mr. Murphy said one of the robbers held the shotgun to the right side of his ribs while the other rummaged through his 1992 blue Chevrolet Camaro.

A 26-year-old Edgewater man was arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder early yesterday morning after a disagreement between himself, his father and older brother ended with a shotgun blast, police said.Thomas Gilbert Dove Jr. of the 1600 block of Millstone Drive also was charged with reckless endangerment, assault and battery and malicious destruction of property.The incident occurred about 2 a.m., police said. After the three men argued, police said, Mr. Dove allegedly shut himself in a bedroom, shoved the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun through the closed door and fired a shot.

Route 140 travelers entering Carroll County are greeted by a picture of a scowling man in a scruffy beard. Clad in blue overalls and a tattered straw hat, he chews a blade of grass and clutches a shotgun in his beefy hands. Beside him stands a pony-tailed young woman in a hot-pink dress. Her hands surround a swollen belly. BRT Laboratories' billboard for DNA paternity testing then lists the company's name and toll-free phone number. The image of a farmer angry about his daughter's pregnancy has raised hackles in Finksburg and in the surrounding farming community.

Two men, one armed with a sawed-off shotgun, robbed a Crofton 7-Eleven store yesterday morning and escaped with an undisclosed amount of money, county police said.The men walked into the store in the 2600 block of Davidsonville Road about 4:30 a.m. and approached the counter. One man pointed to the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun in the sleeve of his sweater, and the other removed money from the register. They ran from the store toward Route 3, police said.Both suspects are black males, police said.

Moments after a jury convicted him yesterday of robbing the Pikesville Holiday Inn, an alleged ringleader in a spate of shotgun robberies last winter vowed to escape from prison, where he was sentenced to life-plus-40 years."