Tate

One run was all the Aberdeen IronBirds needed last night. After an opening-night loss to the Williamsport Crosscutters, the IronBirds turned the tables with a 2-0 victory over Williamsport in front of 5,874 enthusiastic fans at the newly christened Ripken Stadium in a New York-Penn League game. "It feels great. I wish we could have had it yesterday," said IronBirds manager Joe Almaraz, whose team lost, 8-3, on Tuesday. "But we'll take the win because we still have a great crowd. We stayed within ourselves and what we are capable of doing.

On February 3, 2005, KIM of Yolando Road. She is survived by husband Howald Mc Donald; daughter Keyia Jackson; mother Paulette Tate; father Norman Carter; step-father Robert Tate; three sisters and a host of other relatives and friends. Friends may call at William C. Brown Community Funeral Home, 1206 W. North Avenue, on Monday from 5 to 7. On Tuesday at 10 A.M., family will receive friends at the Church of The Redeemed of The Lord, 4321 Old York Road. Funeral Service 10:30 A.M.

An 18-year-old alleged gang member who police said killed two men because one was wearing red, the signature color of a rival gang, pleaded guilty yesterday to two counts of first-degree murder. Eric Tate's plea arrangement, worked out by his attorney and the prosecutor and approved by Baltimore Circuit Judge Allen L. Schwait, means that Tate will spend no more than 50 years in prison for his crimes. Tate, who was to stand trial next week, admitted using a 12-gauge shotgun to kill Anthony Taylor Jr., 20, an alleged Bloods member, and Taylor's friend, Adrian Holiday, 19, a community college student who was not in a gang, in September in Baltimore's Barclay neighborhood.

Lionel Tate, the youngest American ever sentenced to life in prison, will have a lot of people ready to help him ease back into society when he accepts a plea agreement and is released, probably at the end of this month. "It's going to be a lot of pressure on Lionel and on his mother by herself, so we are all working together to put a support team in place," said the Rev. Dennis Grant of Margate, a pastor and activist who has helped many young convicts. Tate was 12 when he was charged with beating Tiffany Eunick, 6, to death in July 1999.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- A hearing that could mean a return to prison for Lionel Tate, once the youngest person in modern U.S. history sentenced to life behind bars, was postponed yesterday after he sent the judge a letter threatening suicide. The handwritten letter prompted acting Broward Circuit Judge Joel Lazarus to schedule a Dec. 19 competency hearing, at least temporarily delaying proceedings that could end with Tate receiving up to a life sentence. Lazarus had been set to start hearing evidence yesterday on whether to revoke Tate's probation for murdering a 6-year-old playmate when he was 12. Tate's case garnered international attention in 2001 when he became the youngest American ever sentenced to life behind bars.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A 13-year-old boy has changed his story, claiming that officers threatened the boy with time in jail unless he named Lionel Tate as the assailant last month in the robbery of a pizza deliveryman, a defense lawyer said yesterday. The boy, Taquincy Tomkins, told private investigators that a 16-year-old named Willie - and not Tate, once the youngest American ever sentenced to life in prison - broke into his apartment, hit him with a door and pointed a gun at the deliveryman.

An Anne Arundel Circuit Court judge yesterday denied a request by convicted killer Brian Arthur Tate to set a release date on his life prison term, a decision that relieved and gratified the victim's family.Judge Raymond G. Thieme said the sentence he imposed last January should not be altered and that Tate's release should be left up to state prison authorities."When and under what circumstances the defendant is to be returned to society is a matter properly for the determination of the parole board," the judge wrote in a one-page decision.

The evidence showed that the gang member grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun from his house, stormed down the middle of the street and fired into the chest of a man wearing the color of another gang. Then he turned the gun on a bystander and killed him, too. Eric Tate, 18, accepted a plea deal and was convicted of first-degree murder in both shootings. But he could still be eligible for parole at age 43. The reality in Baltimore is that a combination of pressures -- including an overloaded criminal docket and uncooperative witnesses -- leads to plea deals that can appear to be generous.

Basil Brown Bradford Jr., a Ruxton businessman, has no hard feelings against his former girlfriend, who admitted hiring a would-be hit man to kill him so she could collect a $300,000 insurance policy. The plot by the former exotic dancer to have Bradford shot was a "mistake," the man wrote to the Baltimore Circuit judge who sentenced her yesterday. "I have forgiven her," Bradford, 35, wrote. "I feel that if she is given a second chance she ... will never make a mistake of this magnitude again."

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Lionel Tate knew he risked spending his life in prison if he kept fighting the criminal cases stacked against him. The convicted killer refused to take a plea deal, though. The 19-year-old told his attorney Tuesday he wanted to go forward with a probation hearing, gambling that a judge wouldn't take away his freedom forever. But less than 45 minutes before the hearing yesterday was set to begin, Tate changed his mind, his lawyer said. What followed was yet another major day in court for the young man who gained worldwide attention in 2001 when he became the youngest American ever sentenced to life behind bars.