Slaying

A 19-year-old Bowie State University student accused of stabbing and killing her suitemate after a dispute over music was indicted Thursday on charges of murder and carrying a dangerous weapon openly. Alexis Simpson had been jailed since last month, when she was arrested in connection with the Sept. 15 slaying of 18-year-old Dominique Frazier. Police have said that Simpson turned off an iPod that was playing in the suite, then stabbed Frazier in the neck after the two got into a fight about it. Frazier and Simpson were suitemates in Bowie State University's Christa McAuliffe residence hall and had ongoing tensions, police have said.

Baltimore police are seeking help in identifying a possible suspect in the April 24 shooting death of a 59-year-old man who was shot while sitting on the front porch of a home in West Baltimore. Police identified the victim as Floyd Dorsey, of the 4100 block of Norfolk Ave. He was shot about 10:45 p.m. that night in the 2500 block of Harlem Ave., and died at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Authorities have released few details on the shooting. They said a man approached Dorsey, shot him and ran away.

Baltimore police arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with a fatal shooting that took place Wednesday afternoon in Northeast Baltimore. Isaacier A. McQueen Jr. has been charged in the death of 19-year-old Craig Manuel, who was shot at about 3:15 p.m. in the 2700 block of Polk St., police said. A witness told The Sun that he heard four or five gunshots and saw Manuel stumbling up the street, where he was later found by officers and rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said police arrested McQueen early Tuesday in East Baltimore, and said that detectives solved the case with help from the community.

Pressure is mounting from Baltimore city council members for a quick resolution in the investigation into a police officer and how he allegedly helped in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Monae Turnage. The officer, identified by sources as 32-year-old John A. Ward, has been suspended from duty. Police have been secrative about their investigation, urging patience as they collect evidence. Sources have said the rifle used to shoot the girl, apparently accidentally by one of her friends, was found in the officer's personal car. Monae's brother found the body 19 hours after her family reported her missing, in a backyard in an alley between Darley and Cliftview avenues in the Darley Park neighborhood, hidden under trash bags.

A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge on Tuesday sentenced a man to life plus 20 years in the slaying of a Milford Mill man during a botched home burglary, the county state's attorneys office said. Kelly Shird, 28, was convicted in October of first-degree murder and first-degree burglary, and was sentenced by Judge Michael Finifter. Shird shot and killed Craig Bouie in Bouie's home during a struggle. Bouie confronted Shird, who had broken into the home through a rear basement window, after leaving his wife's side as she fed their one-month-old son on the second floor.

Baltimore police have made an arrest in the killing of a 50-year-old man whose body was set on fire in April, and court documents appear to indicate an effort by the Police Department to be more deliberate in building cases. Eugene Emmett Bates, 36, was indicted last week and charged in the death of Elmore Rembert, who police say was killed during an argument as the pair used drugs in a vacant home in the Booth-Boyd neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore. Bates is accused of setting the house on fire and stealing Rembert's truck.

A teenager was charged Thursday with fatally shooting a 70-year-old church caretaker during a struggle last year over a scooter, a crime that drew outrage not only among the victim's friends and family but from a city reeling from eight killings in a single week. The suspect, 18-year-old James Jeffrey Johnson, lives five blocks from the rented rowhouse of the victim, Milton Hill, who was shot in an alley behind his home on East North Avenue, next to the Ark Church where he volunteered as a custodian.

He was an elderly Peruvian immigrant beaten to death with his own cane while on a leisurely stroll along Reisterstown Road. Baltimore police had the bloodied cane and a witness who said he saw that attack last May. Detectives quickly arrested Hector Jose Posada and charged the 35-year-old with murder. On Thursday, Assistant State's Attorney Charles Blomquist had to stand before a city judge and explain how the case fell apart, and why prosecutors had to drop the charge and give up virtually any chance of bringing a killer to justice.

Bel Air police last night arrested Rakin Raid Muhammad, a Parkville man wanted since this summer in connection with the shooting death of a 25-year-old Aberdeen man, the town's first homicide in more than four years. Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office, said Muhammad is currently being held without bail at the Harford County Detention Center. The 20-year-old Muhammad, from the 1600 block of Wentworth Avenue, was charged this summer in the July 18 slaying of Derrick Maxey Jr. Police found Maxey's body around 2 a.m. in a rear parking lot of the American Legion in the 100 block of N. Bond St. in Bel Air. A 15-year-old girl entered a Bel Air emergency room a few minutes later with a gunshot wound to the leg, and police believe the girl was shot in the same parking lot as Maxey.

Baltimore County Police have charged an Overlea man in the killing of 19-year-old Bradley Adam Robinson in White Marsh last week. Police arrested Travis Brian Durant, of Dawalt Avenue, Tuesday and charged him with first-degree murder. On August 17, police responding to a call about shots fired found Robinson lying in the front yard of a townhouse near his home in White Marsh. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Detectives said that Robinson had gone to meet with Durant.

A Baltimore prosecutor offered jurors in a murder trial a painful and troubling portrait Wednesday of the victim's final moments, describing how a killer "suffocated and butchered" the boy , whose screams for help she said went unheard by a relative   who had passed out from heroin, The Sun's Peter Hermann reports: Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer Hastings held up two oversized pictures of 15-year-old Jason Mattison Jr., pointed...

Anne Arundel County jurors began weighing the possibility of a death sentence Wednesday for the inmate they convicted of murdering a correctional officer at a now-closed state prison in Jessup. "He brutally murdered, stabbing and ending the life of David McGuinn," prosecutor Sandra F. Howell told the jury, as convicted killer Lee Edward "Shy" Stephens, 32, looked on. "For that, ladies and gentlemen, the law provides the ultimate penalty. " If the jury, scheduled to resume deliberations Thursday morning, agrees with her, Stephens would become the first person to receive a death sentence under Maryland's new and more restrictive capital punishment law. The jury's sentencing choices are death, life without parole and life with the possibility of parole.

Workers at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup held a rally Wednesday to urge state lawmakers to add more jobs at the troubled mental facility where three patients were killed in a 14-month span. Gov. Martin O'Malley has included 93 additional jobs in his budget proposal, but workers and hospital leaders worry that that number might get pared down by nearly 30 as the state faces fiscal pressure. The workers, members of the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees, rallied in front of the hospital waving green signs that said "Budget for Safety.

Indulge me for a moment while I repeat something I have been trying to get journalists to hear for twenty years. One reason that newspaper journalism has been faltering is the stubborn adherence of journalists to a language no one else uses. The readers who are comfortable with journalese, who formed the newspaper habit early, are climbing the golden staircase,* and the succeeding generations are not developing the habit. Why? One reason might well be that journalese sounds odd and unappealing to them.** This meditation was sparked by a tweet from the admirable Jim Romenesko directing me to an article by Bob Ingrassia, "Words Journalists Use That People Never Say. " You will recognize them: altercation , police report language caught by reporter echolalia; blaze for fire ; probe for investigation , a piece of headlinese cropping up in text.

Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the death-penalty trial of a convicted murderer charged with killing a correctional officer at the now-closed House of Correction. If the Anne Arundel County jury convicts Lee Edward "Shy" Stephens in the July 2006 stabbing of Cpl. David McGuinn, he could become the first person sentenced to death under Maryland's new capital punishment law. The three-week trial featured 10 prisoners testifying as eyewitnesses for both the prosecution and defense, giving jurors a peek into life at a troubled maximum-security prison where investigators found hundreds of homemade weapons in the aftermath of the slaying — but no murder weapon.

For years, Baltimore County police were convinced that 24-year-old Heidi Bernadzikowski was killed in 2000 by her boyfriend. Stephen M. Cooke Jr. had taken out a lucrative life-insurance policy on Bernadzikowski just a month before her death. The family sued four years later, alleging he was the killer and shouldn't profit from the death, and called a county homicide detective to testify that Cooke was the sole suspect. They were able to reclaim about $575,000 of the insurance policy through a settlement.

Cornelius Keith Johnson, 24, of Baltimore is facing a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of his half-brother on Nov. 13 at a Glen Burnie seafood restaurant. Johnson, of the 4200 block of Shamrock Ave., had reported Friday to the Baltimore County Detention Center to serve a four-day sentence on an unrelated charge. When officers at the Towson prison checked his warrant status, they discovered he was wanted in connection with the death of 25-year-old Andrew Michael Johnson of the 100 block of Sloane Drive in Glen Burnie.

A prosecution expert testified Friday that violent behavior by the teen accused in the killing of a teacher at the Cheltenham youth facility had escalated, in spite of the treatment he was receiving. Because of the youth's history, he said, the youth needs more treatment than is available in the juvenile system. But a defense witness countered that despite past troubles, the youth could benefit from being treated with other adolescents, rather than being treated as an adult. The experts testified before Prince George's County Circuit Judge C. Philip Nichols, who will decide whether the youth will be tried as a juvenile or as an adult on charges of first-degree murder and sex offenses in the bludgeoning death 11 months ago of 65-year-old Hannah E. Wheeling of Bel Air. The youth was 13 at the time of the slaying, and was being held at Cheltenham on burglary charges.

The half-sister of Robert C. Richardson III recalled a tense relationship between the Harford County teen and their father Wednesday, as his family began to craft a legal strategy the day after he was accused of killing Robert C. Richardson Jr. and dumping his body in a pond. "My brother is a good child — a good, good child," said Abigail Richardson, 20. "Everybody has their snapping point, the point where they just ... everybody has one. " She spoke after meeting with a court-appointed lawyer representing her 16-year-old brother, who has been charged with first- and second-degree murder and use of a handgun in the commission of a violent crime.

On Friday, Baltimore County police sent an email alert to residents proclaiming the “number of homicides in Baltimore County in 2011 was 25 percent lower than in 2005.” That morning's edition of The Baltimore Sun had this story by reporter Luke Broadwater: “Baltimore County ended 2011 with 30 homicides -- a spike from the 20 killings in 2010.” Both are right. A police spokeswoman quoted in Luke's story noted that 2010 was “an anomaly.” That's not how officials described 2010 last year, when the county executive held a news conference to to credit the "hard work and crime-fighting strategies of the Police Department.