Somerset County

In Prince George'sGuard at FDA charged in slaying of co-workerBELTSVILLE -- A security guard at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration building in Prince George's County was charged with murder in the shooting death of a co-worker yesterday morning.According to U.S. Park Police, Todd McNeil, 33, of Elkridge, an employee of Unlimited Security of Washington, got into an argument about career development with James Coffman, also 33, of Beltsville, a guard supervisor, about 2: 15 a.m.Coffman was shot in the head with a handgun, police said.

PRINCESS ANNE -- Four Somerset County teen-agers have been charged in a home invasion in which two University of Maryland Eastern Shore students were dragged from their beds at gunpoint, terrorized and sexually assaulted at their off-campus apartment early Monday.The teen-agers, from Princess Anne, are being held on $500,000 bond each at Somerset County Detention Center. Charges include first-degree sexual assault and burglary.The charges could bring prison terms of 20 years to life. Deandre Cotton, 16, Timothy Holbrook and Tremaine Waters, both 17, and DeShawn Burke, 18, await a preliminary hearing Dec. 28. All four -- including the three minors -- will be tried as adults.

SMITH ISLAND -- For Elmer Evans and more than 100 of his neighbors, the issue is as clear as the heads of churchgoers on Sunday mornings -- there's no reason to change this island's 300-year-old ban on alcohol sales.For the third time in a dozen years, almost one-third of the citizenry of this remote Chesapeake Bay community, most of them tee-totaling Methodists, piled into two ferryboats this week to attend a hearing at the Somerset County Courthouse. There, they pleaded with the county liquor board to reject newcomer Stephen Eades' plans for beer and wine sales at one of the island's two small grocery stores.

CRISFIELD -- Anybody who is anybody in Maryland politics -- and plenty more who want to be somebody in Maryland politics -- converged yesterday on the seafood capital of the Lower Eastern Shore.Up to their elbows in Old Bay, almost 5,000 visitors wielded crab mallets at the 23rd J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clambake, a shindig that raises as much as $70,000 for the local Chamber of Commerce and for one day each summer turns the waterfront town of 2,700 into ground zero for campaign-style schmoozing, even in a nonelection year.

Myrtle H. Hayman, 79, whose roots in Md. date to 1666Myrtle Hopkins Hayman, a Somerset County native whose family's roots in Maryland go back to 1666, died Friday at a Salisbury nursing home after a long battle with heart disease. She was 79.Mrs. Hayman "was a very quiet, home-loving, shy person," who loved baseball and the Baltimore Orioles, said a niece, Louise Hayman.An avid reader who served on the board of the Somerset County Library in Princes Anne, she participated in dedication ceremonies for a new building in 1988.

State police apparently thwarted a plan to bomb an Eastern Shore school yesterday when they arrested a 19-year-old Somerset County high school senior after reporting that they discovered a pipe bomb at his home.Heron G. T. Boyce, a resident of Deal Island, was awaiting a bail review hearing late yesterday after being charged with threat to arson, which could carry a 10-year prison term, a $10,000 fine or both.State police said they found explosives packed into a 6-inch piece of bamboo when they searched a bedroom in Boyce's home about 7 a.m. yesterday.

EASTON -- For the second time in two years, a Talbot County jury will be asked to decide whether a North Carolina man convicted of killing a Maryland state trooper should die by lethal injection.Prosecutors and defense attorneys began interviewing 60 prospective jurors yesterday, selecting the panel that will deliver a new sentence for Ivan F. Lovell, who pleaded guilty to the 1995 shooting of 28-year-old Tfc. Edward A. Plank Jr. on U.S. 13 in rural Somerset County.A Talbot jury sentenced Lovell to death in June 1996, but the sentence was overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals.

PRINCESS ANNE -- Tony Mazzaccaro last week peered through a microscope lens, searching for an elusive killer. "I just don't see it," he said. "Looks like I won't have to nuke the pond after all."This time.Mazzaccaro, owner of the Hyrock fish farm by the Manokin River in Somerset County, was looking for a microorganism that might have been responsible for killing 8,000 of his hybrid striped bass in early August. A year earlier, a microbe may have killed 23,000 of his farm's adult bass.Both times, he had to "nuke" several of his fish ponds -- treat them with chemicals to clean them of harmful organisms.

Edith Catherine Dorsey, 72, worked for P.G. CountyEdith Catherine Dorsey, a homemaker and former Prince George's County employee, died of complications of a stroke Mondayat William Hill Manor Health Care Center in Easton. She was 72 and a Princess Anne resident.Known as "Mickey," beginning in 1946, she worked respectively for the Census Bureau, and the election board and school board of Prince George's County. She retired in 1981.That year, she and her husband, Edward V. Dorsey Sr., whom she married in 1943, moved to Lexington, Ky., where he enrolled in the Episcopal Seminary of Kentucky to study for the priesthood.

A North Carolina researcher tentatively linked sick fish in a second Eastern Shore waterway to the Pfiesteria microorganism yesterday, while a Maryland medical team said it has examined 28 people -- 15 more than previously reported -- who may have been sickened by the microbe.Gov. Parris N. Glendening appointed 11 members to a commission to investigate the spreading problem.And in Somerset County last night, 300 residents -- worried about their health and that of their waterways -- packed a high school auditorium hoping to learn more about Pfiesteria.

Wade D. Ward, who practiced law in Crisfield for more than 50 years and was active in numerous civic, Masonic and veterans organizations, died Monday of cardiovascular disease at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury. He was 85. Mr. Ward, the son of a State Roads Commission worker and a homemaker, was born and raised in Crisfield. After graduating from Crisfield High School in 1941, he was inducted into the Army. He served in Europe and the Pacific with an artillery unit. At the end of World War II, he enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1950.

Somerset Democrats didn't slight minorities I live and work in Somerset County and I am a member of the Democratic Central Committee. I have read with great interest your article and editorial concerning racial disparities in Somerset County. While I agree with the gist of the article, I must take strong issue with using the recent appointment of James East to the Somerset County Board of Commissioners as an example implying that blacks and other minorities are specifically excluded from holding high office in our county.

Anyone who believes the U.S. has entered a post-Barack Obama age of enlightened race relations ought to spend some time in Somerset County. According to a report released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, the lower Eastern Shore county shows little to no interest in correcting long-standing racial disparities in hiring, appointments and elected office. Maybe this will shame the powers that be in Maryland's poorest county to make some changes, but given their track record, it probably won't.

Decades of racial strife have left their mark on Somerset County, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP said Tuesday as they called on leaders of the Eastern Shore county to ensure minorities get better access to good-paying school and government jobs. In a report, the groups noted that no African-American has ever been elected or appointed to a top job in county government, and that no African-American was employed by the county in a professional capacity in 2007, according to the latest statistics submitted to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Lucretia H. Harris, a retired Somerset County housekeeper and cook who was recently honored by the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and who established a scholarship in her name on her 100th birthday, died Saturday at Manokin Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Princess Anne. Mrs. Harris, who was diagnosed three days before her death with leukemia, had lived at Manokin Manor for three years. She celebrated her 100th birthday June 21 at a party with family and friends on the UMES campus in Princess Anne, at which time the scholarship in her name was unveiled.

Richard W. Story once spent 20 hours in front of a mirror over a span of several days, but not to admire his anchorman-worthy hair. Instead, he was practicing the pronunciation of 500 words for the first Howard County Spelling Bee. Still, he ended up adding an extra "er" to "embroider," and the unsuspecting student speller was eliminated from the contest by the judge, he said. The girl was quickly reinstated, though, for correctly spelling the incorrect word he'd given her, he added. But after he mispronounced "tilde," which is an accent placed over the letter "n" in the Spanish language, as "tilled" instead of "til-duh" -- a gaffe that stumped all the students -- he said library director Valerie Gross later told him he was "being promoted" from pronouncer to emcee.

2 Hickey escapees hunted; help sought State police said yesterday they were still searching for two teenagers who escaped from a juvenile detention center in Baltimore County last week, and they went to court for approval to release their names and photographs. Police said Justin A. Russell, 15, and Davon Julius, 16, both of Baltimore, escaped July 31 from the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School on Cub Hill Road in Carney. They were in a group of four youths who had been brought to a medical satellite building within the school's fenced compound about 8 p.m. to receive their medications.

Since Team Maryland began playing at the U.S. Field Hockey Association's Hockey Festival in the mid-1990s, no team had ever won its pool - until this fall. The Team Maryland Breakers, comprising high school players from the metro area and the Eastern Shore, went 5-1 to come out on top of their Under-19 pool at the annual festival over Thanksgiving weekend in Indio, Calif. The Breakers scored 10 goals and allowed only one, thanks to fine defense from Kaitlin Boarman and Liz Tollett (Chesapeake-AA)

Somerset rezones for ethanol plant Somerset County officials approved a zoning change yesterday that would allow a $136 million ethanol plant on the lower Eastern Shore. Chesapeake Renewable Energy LLC wants to build a plant to manufacture 50 million gallons of ethanol a year on U.S. 13 just north of Pocomoke City. The Somerset County commission voted 4-0 yesterday to rezone the 78-acre site to allow the plant. Company officials hope to open in spring 2008, but the proposal first will be scrutinized by state and local officials.

A national boom in the use of ethanol has lured eight companies into a race to build Maryland's first factory to convert corn into car fuel. Two of the proposals would put ethanol plants on the Baltimore area's industrial waterfront in 2008 - one on Sparrows Point and the other in Curtis Bay. A third, on the Eastern Shore, will be considered today when Somerset County commissioners vote on a zoning change to allow a $136 million ethanol plant. "Producing ethanol is quite compatible with what people already do in Somerset County - they raise grain here, and we're an agricultural industry," said Mack Shelor, a manager with Chesapeake Renewable Energy LLC, which plans to manufacture 50 million gallons of ethanol a year along U.S. 13 north of Pocomoke City.