Strangled

Kathleen Leeson was loading clothes in her dryer just a few dozen feet away from her foster son in August when he accidentally strangled himself with the window blind cords in her Montgomery Village home. In just a few seconds, and with no noise, the 2-year-old boy was unconscious. Angel Duenas would die later in a hospital, one of the 12 children per year killed on average by dangerous window coverings. "They don't thrash around. They don't yell for help," Leeson said. "They die so quickly and so silently that there's no way for anyone to know they're in trouble until they're found."

Baltimore Police have identified a man found dead Friday in an alley in Brooklyn as a 42-year-old Glen Burnie man. Armando Santiago was found unresponsive at about 6:15 p.m. Friday in an alley in the rear of the 700 block of E. Patapsco Ave. There were no signs of foul play or trauma to his body, but police say an autopsy shows that he had been strangled. Santiago was from the 5600 block of Park Road in Glen Burnie, and police say they don't have any additional information about the case as detectives investigate.

An autopsy by the state medical examiner's office has ruled the death of a 19-year-old woman, whose body was found under a bridge in Herring Run Park on Friday, a homicide by strangulation, a city police spokesman said. The victim's name was being withheld pending notification of family, said Agent Donny Moses, the spokesman. About 7 a.m., a jogger found the woman lying on rocks between a paved trail and a stream that runs under a bridge on Harford Road. Moses said no arrest had been made in the woman's death and that there was no evidence linking her slaying to those of several other women, some of them prostitutes, who were either beaten to death or strangled over the past several months around the city.

Maryland delegates will consider Thursday a bill that would separate men's and women's bedrooms in state psychiatric hospitals, a move that advocates contend would protect vulnerable women but that health officials say they need more time to research. The bill would also require the hospitals to screen patients for risk of abusive behavior and report all instances of sexual abuse and harassment to authorities. The bill is spurred, supporters say, by last year's killing of a female patient on a coed ward at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a state psychiatric facility that houses the criminally insane.

A teen-age girl found dead Sunday near the Back River sewage treatment plant was strangled, an autopsy performed yesterday showed.The victim was identified yesterday as Courtney Danielle Letiro, 16, of the 1800 block of Grempler Way in Edgewood, who was reported missing Jan. 18, Baltimore County police said. Her family said she had run away from home."Jan. 22 was her birthday," said E. Jay Miller, a county police spokesman. "We don't know if she made it to her birthday. We believe she had been dead for more than a day or so, perhaps even several days.

Several Maryland correctional officers witnessed Davon Cole, 19, strangle a cellmate at the Baltimore City Detention Center Monday night, according to court documents charging Cole with first- and second-degree murder and assault. The suspect "disregarded the officers' orders" to release Xavier Tilghman, 21, the documents state, and officers had to enter the cell to pull him off the victim. Cole had Tilghman pinned to the floor with his "arm wrapped tightly around Tilghman's neck," the officers told investigators.

A Carroll County jury convicted a 35-year-old Pennsylvania man of first-degree murder yesterday for strangling a woman on a Harney farm in 1991.The nine-man, three woman panel deliberated about five hours before returning the verdict against James Howard VanMetre III, a self-employed tree trimmer from East Berlin, Pa.As the foreman read the verdict, VanMetre stood and glanced toward the jury. He shook his head several times as the panel was polled by a court clerk.The status of two other charges against VanMetre is unclear.

The unidentified man whose body was found Tuesday afternoon by a farmer who was harvesting soybeans in rural South County was strangled, the state medical examiner's office said yesterday.Dr. Dennis Chute, who performed the autopsy, would not comment further.Police said the farmer, whom they would not identify, found the man's body about 3:25 p.m. Tuesday. The body was in woods 100 feet west of Upper Pindell Road, near Pindell Road, less than one mile from the Calvert County line.Officer Terry Crowe, a county police spokesman, said police believe the man may have been killed elsewhere.

Police have identified a woman whose body was found partially clothed near New Psalmist Baptist Church in Southwest Baltimore this month. Brenda Hatfield, 45, is one of several women found strangled in the past few months. Her body was discovered July 8 in the 4500 block of Old Frederick Road, police said. In addition to strangulation, police spokesman Troy Harris said yesterday that blunt force trauma was another cause of Hatfield's death. A sister of the victim said that despite a recent report in the Baltimore Examiner that Hatfield may have been involved in prostitution, her sister was not a prostitute.

MOSCOW - In a potentially crucial turn for a contentious criminal trial, two forensic psychiatrists testified yesterday that Yuri D. Budanov, a colonel in the Russian army, was insane when he strangled an 18-year-old Chechen woman nearly three years ago. The psychiatrists' judgment of insanity - the second such opinion in months - appeared to pave the way for Budanov's acquittal in a court proceeding that has become a yardstick for Russia's ability or...

The young teen accused of killing a teacher at the troubled Cheltenham juvenile detention facility has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree rape. He was ordered jailed without bond Wednesday. The charges come after Prince George's County Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr. ruled that Brian Lee Wonsom, now 14, could be tried as an adult. He was 13 at the time of the attack. Wonsom is charged in the killing of Hannah Wheeling, 65, a teacher from Bel Air whose bludgeoned and partially clothed body was found Feb. 18, 2010, at the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.

A judge ordered an 80-year-old Baltimore man accused of strangling his wife held without bail at a hearing Wednesday morning. Police said they found Philip Reid choking his wife, Glennie, 83, Monday night in the couple's Edmondson Village home. He was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree assault Tuesday night. According to police, the couple's daughter said she drove her father to the house and waited in the car, unaware of what he had planned. She said she heard screams and called police, who forced open the door.

In West Baltimore's Edmondson Village neighborhood, opinions about the state of Philip and Glennie Reid's marriage seem to vary from house to house. A man who lives a few doors from the couple said he has known them for more than four decades and never saw the two argue. But a next-door neighbor of about three months said he believed that Philip Reid had put his wife out of their home last week after a fight. There is one thing the neighbors agreed on: No one thought that Reid, 83, an introverted but giving man who shared cucumbers and peaches from his garden, was capable of strangling his 80-year-old wife.

In West Baltimore's Edmondson Village neighborhood, opinions about the state of Philip and Glennie Reid's marriage seem to vary from house to house. A man who lives a few doors from the couple said he has known them for more than four decades and never saw the two argue. But a next-door neighbor of about three months said he believed that Philip Reid had put his wife out of their home last week after a fight. There is one thing the neighbors agreed on: No one thought that Reid, 83, an introverted but giving man who shared cucumbers and peaches from his garden, was capable of strangling his 80-year-old wife.

Bankruptcy and debt default are a real possibility for cities around the country that can't pay their bills, largely caused by lavish retirement and health care benefits for employees that taxpayers couldn't afford even in good times. Los Angeles is headed down that road. Vallejo, Calif., filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Closer to home, Harrisburg, Pa., is exploring the option as a way to restructure bills it can't pay. And last week, Warren Buffet said at a hearing of the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York that his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has been cutting its exposure to municipal debt because he foresees "a terrible problem" with state and local bonds.

Betsy Sue Riggin, an affable 29-year-old, told her family she met her boyfriend Andrew Jackson at a salad bar in Baltimore three years ago. He was a "wonderful man," and they were expecting their first child in September. But on Thursday, Riggin was found dead behind the locked door of her Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello home, strangled. Jackson was charged Saturday in her death, and the woman's family is now learning about the long criminal history of a man authorities believe Riggin actually met at her job as a food services manager at the city jail.

The heir to a $1 million estate will spend the rest of his life in prison without chance for parole for his role in the slaying of a 74-year-old retired nurse, who was strangled with a dog leash in her home.James Calvert McGee, 42, of Annapolis was sentenced by Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Eugene M. Lerner after a hearing in which his lawyer admitted he had nothing good to say about him.McGee was convicted by a jury of first-degee murder and robbery in the April 15, 1995, slaying of Katherine Huntt Ryon, a longtime family friend.

After four days of deliberations, a Baltimore jury failed to reach a verdict Thursday evening on a man charged with raping and killing a Bolton Hill woman more than 20 years ago, leading a Circuit Court judge to declare a mistrial, according to the city state's attorney's office. Kevin Gerald Robinson was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Lisa Barselou, whose body was found beaten and submerged in the bathtub of her home in the 1700 block of Park Ave. in November 1989.