Stray Bullet

A 42-year-old Dundalk woman asleep in her bedroom was seriously wounded by a stray bullet late last night during a shooting incident across the street, Baltimore County police said. The man who fired the shots later committed suicide.Nancy Hile Lang, of the 1900 block of Jackson Road, was listed in good condition today at the Shock-Trauma Unit in Baltimore with a wound in the back, police said.Police spokesman E. Jay Miller said the bizarre shooting incident began when Owen Richard Jennings, 53, of the 7200 block of River Drive in Edgemere, drove up to his sister-in-law's home on Jackson Road about 11:20 p.m. His wife, Delores M. Schuman, 52, had gone there after a domestic argument yesterday.

Relatives and friends of a young mother killed by a stray bullet on Labor Day weekend urged witnesses Saturday to come forward and help Baltimore police solve the crime. "People are little bit afraid," to talk to police, said Geron Mills, 23, as he and others gathered to note the six-month mark since LaRelle Ashlyn Amos died. "But you've got to put yourself in our shoes. " The 22-year-old Amos was shot Sept. 2, one victim of a bloody Baltimore weekend that saw 10 other people injured by gunfire and five more killed.

A 4-year-old boy was shot by what appeared to be a stray bullet that entered a Columbia apartment yesterday evening after what police believe was a brief altercation at a shopping center. The boy, whom police have declined to identify, was in critical condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Police said the shot was fired outside a corner apartment at the Sierra Woods apartment complex about 6 p.m. The bullet went through the lower part of the front window of a corner apartment where the boy was struck.

In a recent article on gun control hearings in Annapolis ("Opinions differ on Md. gun controls," Feb. 7), Sonia Mangum of Stevensville is quoted as saying, in opposition to limits of the ammunition capacity in gun magazines, "If I am under duress, I am going to be missing and may not have time to reload. " She presents more of an argument why the capacity of magazines should be limited. How many of her bullets are being fired? How many are missing? Where are the bullets from those missed shots going?

A 2 1/2 -year-old girl was shot last night when a stray bullet fired from a nearby quarry passed through a sliding glass door of her babysitter's Laurel home and struck her in the right leg, Anne Arundel County police said.Katie Ellsworth was listed in fair condition last night at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center with a broken right leg, police said. The bullet remained lodged in her right calf, police said.Investigators combed the quarry behind the home, in the 3500 block of Rippling Way, but were unable to locate the person who fired the shot, said Officer Randy Bell, a county police spokesman.

A 6-year-old boy was wounded yesterday by a stray bullet during a shootout in Northeast Baltimore, police said. Police received a call about 5 p.m. about a shooting in the 3200 block of Lyndale Ave. at the corner of St. Cloud Avenue in Bel Air-Edison, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The boy, who was one of several children playing in the area at the time of the shooting, was struck once, Moses said. The bullet passed through the upper right side of the boy's chest and did not strike any vital organs, Moses said.

City police were trying to determine whether a 2-month-old baby boy was shot in the head yesterday evening by a stray bullet fired from outside his O'Donnell Heights home. Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, said that shortly after 6 p.m., someone standing in the 6100 block of Plantview Way fired several shots, one of which penetrated the exterior wall of a rowhouse and entered the house. In the confusion that followed the gunshots, Harris said, residents of the house grabbed the baby and rushed outside for safety.

A 21-year-old woman who was inside her Northeast Baltimore home was struck by gunfire that came crashing through her patio door Monday evening, Baltimore police said. The shooting, which occurred in the 2200 block of Pinewood Ave., near the Mount Pleasant Golf Course, happened around 6 p.m., police said. The bullets grazed the woman in the back of her head and shoulder, police said. She was taken to an area hospital, where her condition is stable, police said. Investigators did not immediately have additional details to release, and could not say whether the victim was struck by a stray bullet or targeted.

The last time Robert Hardy Jr. saw his mother alive, Nannie Hardy was heading to her bedroom to rub her arthritic body with salve and say the Lord's Prayer.An hour later, at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Mr. Hardy found his 71-year-old mother on the floor with a bullet wound in her neck. Police believe she was hit by a stray bullet that came through the window of her second-floor bedroom.Mrs. Hardy was one of four people killed by gunfire in the city during the weekend. The death of a fifth man found across from the Mount Pleasant Golf Course is being listed as questionable.

A picture above his bed depicts the Last Supper, and left open on his bed is a worn copy of the Bible from which he would read a few pages every night. He last read I Corinthians, Chapter 8.James Chester Streeter's life revolved around his family and serving the Lord. But Monday night, as the deacon walked through a drug-infested area near his East Baltimore home to deliver coats to friends as a church duty, he was struck fatally by a stray bullet.Mr. Streeter, 28, who lived in the 2100 block of Cliftwood Ave., was pronounced dead a short time later.

Aaliyah Boyer had hoped to watch the New Year's ball drop on TV, but when she learned she had missed the stroke of midnight by 32 seconds, she returned to the front yard with her friends to watch her neighbors light fireworks. Nearby, someone apparently fired a gun into the air to add to the celebration. Amid the jubilation, the 10-year-old fell to the ground, the warmth and color draining from her body after she was hit by a falling bullet. Her family initially thought that she had fainted, but the wound would prove fatal.

Even as relatives and friends held a funeral Monday to mourn a young mother killed by a stray bullet, Baltimore police pushed to solve a spate of killings that has left 10 dead in the past 10 days. Dozens of mourners passed the open casket of LaRelle Ashlyn Amos, the former high school honor student who was killed after a family party in the early morning hours of Sept. 2. Geron Mills, the man Amos had called "the love of my life," placed his hand on his own chest, then on hers. "I took my heart out and put it in there with her," Mills, the father of Amos' 1-year-old son, Geron II, said as he addressed more than 700 people at St. Stephens AME Church in Essex.

The mother of a young girl hit with a stray bullet fired by a juvenile offender who was under GPS tracking is seeking millions of dollars from the state vendor that provides the monitoring, claiming in a lawsuit that the company knew its product was flawed. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court this week by Danielle Brooks, whose daughter, Raven Wyatt, was 5 years old when she was struck by a bullet and suffered catastrophic injuries. The girl is now 8, and the family's attorney estimates her care could cost more than $7 million over her lifetime.

The state's second-highest court has overturned a murder conviction for a man who police say participated in a drug deal that ended in gunfire, which killed a Baltimore County grandmother hit by a stray bullet. Donald S. Kohler did not shoot Shirley Worcester, 58, outside her Middle River home in January 2009. Police said Kohler had cheated a dealer out of four pounds of marijuana by handing over fake money and was running away when the dealer shooting at him hit the victim instead.

A 21-year-old woman who was inside her Northeast Baltimore home was struck by gunfire that came crashing through her patio door Monday evening, Baltimore police said. The shooting, which occurred in the 2200 block of Pinewood Ave., near the Mount Pleasant Golf Course, happened around 6 p.m., police said. The bullets grazed the woman in the back of her head and shoulder, police said. She was taken to an area hospital, where her condition is stable, police said. Investigators did not immediately have additional details to release, and could not say whether the victim was struck by a stray bullet or targeted.

A fatal stabbing and the baffling shooting of a 4-year-old boy stunned visitors to Baltimore's downtown Fourth of July festivities and drew condemnation from the city's mayor and police commissioner as they worked to remind people of the thousands who enjoyed the celebration without incident. The violence occurred despite the presence of nearly 600 city and state officers to help with a crowd that was nearly double the size that attended last year, according to Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "Our citizens, our visitors deserve better, and [they]

A 3-year-old East Baltimore boy was killed by stray gunfire last night in front of his family's rowhouse in the 900 block of E. Biddle St.The child, Andre Antonio Dorsey, was hit about 7 o'clock when an East Baltimore youth fired a single shot at a man who was running up the street, police said. The child was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival at Johns Hopkins Hospital.Charged with first-degree murder and using a handgun in the commission of a felony is Rudolph Horton Jr., 15, of the 1200 block of N. Bond St. He was being sought today.

Jerry Walley devoted his life to God and church. Even when the 19-year-old stopped for snacks at a convenience store near his West Baltimore home, he often had a Bible or a religious pamphlet in hand.Monday night, with seven relatives in the family van headed to their church near their Dickeyville home, a stray bullet fired from a group of warring young men shattered the driver's side window and struck Walley in the left side of the head.The victim -- described as a "kind and gentle person" by his next-door neighbor -- struggled on life-support for more than eight hours at Sinai Hospital before he was pronounced dead at 5: 45 a.m. yesterday.

I'm a seventeen year old student who attends Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. I was intrigued by the article "Two injured near memorial to 6-year-old child who was killed by gunfire in 1991" (May 14). The memorial is a transfer point on the bus I catch to and from school every day and had just been redecorated less than two weeks ago. This is an awful tragedy because the memorial symbolizes the life of a young girl named Tiffany Smith who was killed by a stray bullet. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had just made the memorial a landmark in Baltimore, and already another crime has overshadowed the good in it. The worst part about the story is most people have lost the main issue at hand, which is Tiffany Smith's memorial being another crime scene.

The anguished mother pounded the floor at Johns Hopkins Hospital, screaming, "Why, why, why?" Dr. John Wogan had just told her as gently as he knew how that her teenage son was dead, the victim of a stray bullet fired on the streets of Baltimore. The next day the mother was dead herself, felled by a burst blood vessel in her brain that Wogan believes resulted from the terrible, sudden stress of learning her child was gone. Twenty years later the episode remains etched in the doctor's memory.