Toohey

Construction and office workers avoided injury when a 3-ton steel beam slipped from a crane and fell 20 feet through the 10th floor of the IBM tower downtown.As construction workers at the tower at 100 E. Pratt St. were raising the 30-foot beam at about 10 a.m. yesterday, the beam slipped from the crane collar and crashed through the roof of a T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. office, said Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the city Department of Housing and Community Development."Miraculously, no one was hurt," Toohey said.

A former Roman Catholic priest who was accused in January of sexually abusing a former Calvert Hall College student has been charged in Baltimore County, according to charging documents. Jerome F. Toohey Jr. is accused of abusing the student between 1987 and 1989 when Toohey was a chaplain at the boys high school in Towson. He was charged May 26 with child abuse, third-degree sex offense and perverted practice, and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing next month, according to charging documents.

A Roman Catholic priest who a decade ago publicly denied an allegation of sexual abuse has been accused of another series of incidents, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. This time, a former Calvert Hall College high school student said the priest, Jerome F. Toohey Jr., abused him over the course of several years. Toohey, known as Father Jeff, has not been practicing as a priest since 1993, when he was first accused of abusing a young man. Toohey, 58, did not respond to a message left at his home yesterday.

A Cockeysville man shot his former live-in fiancee in the head, then fatally shot himself yesterday in the parking lot of a Hunt Valley business, police said.At 7:58 a.m. Robert Francis Kane, 54, shot Christine Ann Dillon, 44, in the parking lot of Procter & Gamble Co. at Wight Avenue and Pepper Road, near York Road in Hunt Valley.The two had had a 15-year relationship that Dillon told police was marked by violence, and they had lived together in an apartment complex in Cockeysville until November when Dillon left to stay with relatives, according to Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey.

Baltimore County police were intensely focused on finding Jack L. Durrett Jr. during most of the 76 minutes that elapsed between the 911 call from his mother warning that he might be suicidal and the call they made to Anne Arundel County police warning that Durrett's estranged wife could be in danger, a Baltimore County police spokesman said yesterday. Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the Baltimore County police, said his agency's officers called Anne Arundel authorities immediately after Durrett's family raised concerns about his estranged wife, Diana.

Baltimore County police shot and wounded a woman this morning after coming under fire while serving a warrant at a house in Essex, authorities said. Plainclothes detectives from the Essex drug unit were looking for another woman wanted on a drug-related warrant at the residence in the 300 block of Magnolia Terrace, police spokesman Bill Toohey said. The officers entered a second-floor bedroom shortly before 8 a.m. and identified themselves as police, according to Toohey. A woman in the bedroom -- reportedly the mother of the suspect sought in the warrant -- allegedly fired a handgun once at the officers but missed, and police returned fire.

A man being chased by Baltimore County police along Marriottsville Road in Randallstown yesterday afternoon lost control of his car, which overturned and then erupted into flames, a police spokesman said. The driver, who was not identified because charges had not been filed, got out of the 1992 Buick and ran before the fire started, said Bill Toohey, a county police spokesman. After he was apprehended, the man was taken to Northwest Hospital Center for minor injuries from the crash, Toohey said.

Ending a standoff that lasted nearly nine hours, a Baltimore County police SWAT team entered a Lochearn residence last night and found a Baltimore City police officer and another man dead of apparent gunshot wounds.The names of the victims were not immediately released.According to Bill Toohey, county police spokesman, the armed and despondent officer went to his girlfriend's house in the 6800 block of Campfield Road about 3 p.m. and found her and another man.Toohey said the 28-year-old officer's family learned he was there and notified county police because he was distraught and armed.

A man was being held Friday in the stabbing death of a 26-year-old acquaintance in Woodlawn. A Baltimore County police spokesman said the suspect would be charged with first-degree murder on Friday evening, and that the department would release both his name and that of the victim at that time. The spokesman, William Toohey, said the two men got into a fight shortly before 1:30 a.m. Friday outside an apartment building in the 3300 block of Aurora Lane. "We don't know what they were fighting about," Toohey said.

A Randallstown High School football player has been charged with stabbing one person and robbing three others at gunpoint in Baltimore County in the past two weeks, according Baltimore County police. Police say that Vaschon Gilmer, 18, randomly walked up to three people on the street March 19 and March 20, displayed a handgun and robbed them of money, iPods and cell phones. The first robbery occurred near the 4400 block of Old Court Road. Police believe he stabbed a man March 23, as he walked down the street near Offutt and Liberty roads, said Baltimore County spokesman Bill Toohey.