Two Friends

Warrants have been issued for a man and a woman in the stabbing Sunday morning of a Marine who was killed when he went to the aid of two friends during an altercation on an East Baltimore street, said a detective assigned to the Regional Warrant Apprehension Task Forced. Maurice Crosby, 19, of the 5200 block of Saybrook Road and Erica Ammenhauser, 20, of the 200 block of S. Durham St. are each charged in warrants with first-degree murder and related offenses in the stabbing death of Michael LaMaris Simms, 18, of Northeast Baltimore, said Detective Keith DeVoe.

El Capitan is an intimidating granite formation in California's Yosemite National Park, popular with climbers because its 7,573-foot vertical face presents such a challenge. Pete Davis has done the four-night, five-day ascent twice, which is an accomplishment in itself. And he did it with one hand. The native of Phoenix in Baltimore County was born without an arm below the elbow, but as he shows in the short climbing film "The Gimp Monkeys," he'd rather have "one hand and a good attitude" than two hands and a bad outlook.

While a suspected assailant in the slaying of James "Jay" Bias 3rd remains unidentified and at large, a suspect who surrendered seven hours after the shooting in a Hyattsville shopping center was facing a bail review hearing today in Upper Marlboro.Jerry Samuel Tyler, 24, of the 4900 block of Iverson Place in Temple Hills, who turned himself in at the Oxon Hill precinct of the Prince George's County police, was charged with first-degree murder.Tyler was being held without bond in the county jail in Upper Marlboro pending the hearing in District Court later today, said Sgt. Chuck Cooke, a police spokesman.

Some 700 mourners filled the pews Friday for a funeral Mass for 19-year-old Elizabeth Conway Nass, who died after being "at the wrong place at the wrong time," Monsignor John A. Dietzenbach said, referring to this week's tragic train derailment in Ellicott City. Ms. Nass, who died along with her friend, Rose Louese Mayr, was remembered at the Church of the Resurrection as a fun-loving, spirited woman who was studying at James Madison University in Virginia to be a special-education teacher.

Two Northwest Baltimore teenagers were charged yesterday with killing a former high school wrestling standout during a botched drug deal in the parking lot of Owings Mills mall. Baltimore County police said Christopher Richard Williams, 15, and Avion Richard Rodriguez, 18, killed Kevin Garmzaban of Eldersburg after a dispute over marijuana Tuesday evening. Williams bragged about the fatal shooting a few hours after it occurred and "laughed" when he told a friend about it, according to court documents.

A 25-year-old New Jersey man was shot three times early yesterday while helping two friends fight off a gang of men at Howard and Baltimore streets, city police reported.Dean Ilconich, 25, of Marlton, N.J., was listed in satisfactory condition yesterday at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Police said one bullet grazed Mr. Ilconich's head and the other two struck him in the shoulder.Police officers were told that Mr. Ilconich was walking along Howard Street with two friends about 2:10 a.m. when a group of five to 10 men attacked them.

OCEAN CITY -- A 24-year-old Virginia man was presumed dead after disappearing in the surf near 15th Street, where he was swimming with friends yesterday, Ocean City police reported.The man, whose name was not given, was caught in a current with two friends about 2 p.m. His friends escaped, but he sank, police said.

A Baltimore Circuit Court jury took less than an hour yesterday to acquit an 18-year-old Randallstown man of rape charges for filming two of his friends having sex with a 12-year-old girl.Clifton Carter Jr. was charged with first-and second-degree rape and assault and battery for his role in the incident on Nov. 9, 1990, although he wasn't accused of having intercourse with the girl.After finding Mr. Carter not guilty on all four charges, the jury of 10 men and one woman asked to make a statement in court.

James Cameron, 92, who survived an attempted lynching by a white mob and went on to found America's Black Holocaust Museum, died Sunday in Milwaukee. In 1930, in Marion, Ind., Mr. Cameron, who was then age 16 and worked shining shoes, and two friends were arrested and accused of killing a white man during a robbery and raping the man's companion. A mob took them out of jail and hanged Mr. Cameron's two friends, then placed a rope around his neck. "They began to chant for me like a football player, `We want Cameron, we want Cameron,'" he recalled in a 2003 interview with the Associated Press.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued a Baltimore man whose boat foundered while he searched the mouth of the Gunpowder River Saturday night for two friends who also were boating.Edward Sentz, 31, had spent nearly three hours in the 62-degree water late Saturday after gusty winds and two-foot waves overwhelmed his motorboat, Petty Officer John Lowery said.Meanwhile, Mr. Sentz's friends, who also had been in a motorboat, weathered the storm at a private dock, Petty Officer Lowery said.Mr. Sentz, of Sylvan Avenue in Baltimore, was treated at Franklin Square Hospital Center and released yesterday.

American Rust By Philipp Meyer Spiegel & Grau / 367 pages / $24.95 Isaac English isn't given to idle speculation. Like his friend, Billy Poe, he has to learn his lessons the hard way. American Rust, Philipp Meyer's debut novel, gets its power from their efforts to do just that. The characters manage (and fail to manage) their complex lives in run-down neighborhoods, where they get drunk, argue, fight, have sex, find and lose hope, kill (by accident), attempt suicide and run away. They also struggle mightily with the meaning of love, not the romance-novel type but the what-would-Jesus-do type.

The formalities of the court were over, decorum maintained. Beans killed Shrimp, and the judge sentenced him to four years in prison. Donald Rheubottom, a captain with the Baltimore sheriff's office and the head of Circuit Court security, had successfully kept the two warring families apart - one seeking justice, the other leniency. It was an accident during a wrestling match between the best of friends in a jail cell they shared at the Baltimore City Detention Center, in a dispute over a Monopoly game.

Mamma Mia!, the film of the international stage smash showcasing the greatest hits of ABBA, is like a party where everyone is so desperate to have a good time that it makes you miserable. With Meryl Streep as a former pop-rock star who now runs a decaying Greek tourist hotel and Christine Baranski and Julie Walters as her ex-band mates, the movie has a set of actresses who can sing and dance. But you won't be able to gauge their skill from the evidence here. The director, Phyllida Lloyd, encourages them to embellish their tunes with campy humor or belt them at the top of their lungs.

Exhausted, waterlogged and stung by jellyfish, musician Orlando Phillips had thoughts of gratitude, but not happiness, when he was pulled from the choppy waters of the Chesapeake Bay after his boat went down near Deale. "I had the feeling that I didn't want to live without my brother, and that my friends were gone," he said yesterday, recalling his desperation. When Phillips' boat became entangled in fishing net and sank about 10:20 p.m. Sunday, he became separated from his brother, Gregory, and two friends.

Warrants have been issued for a man and a woman in the stabbing Sunday morning of a Marine who was killed when he went to the aid of two friends during an altercation on an East Baltimore street, said a detective assigned to the Regional Warrant Apprehension Task Forced. Maurice Crosby, 19, of the 5200 block of Saybrook Road and Erica Ammenhauser, 20, of the 200 block of S. Durham St. are each charged in warrants with first-degree murder and related offenses in the stabbing death of Michael LaMaris Simms, 18, of Northeast Baltimore, said Detective Keith DeVoe.

The two officers are friends -- one a federal agent, the other a Virginia state trooper -- and they planned to attend the funeral of a Baltimore police detective who was shot to death in what appeared to be a botched robbery. But hours before they were to put on their dress uniforms and join thousands of colleagues in mourning Tuesday, they became robbery victims themselves. Police said the two were held up by a man with a silver-colored handgun shortly after bars and restaurants closed in busy O'Donnell Square in Canton.

An Annapolis landscaper pleaded guilty yesterday to automobile manslaughter stemming from the Thanksgiving Day crash that killed his friend on a Crownsville road. Jose A. Munoz, 42, is to be sentenced July 17 in the death of Maximiliano Merlos, 34, also of Annapolis, on Nov. 28. "There [is] almost a 100 percent certainty that you will be deported from the United States," his attorney, Peter S. O'Neill, told him in court yesterday. Munoz is from El Salvador. Assistant State's Attorney Shelly Stickell said she will seek an 18-month jail term when Munoz is sentenced.

" 'Two and Too Much' by Mildred Pitts Walter is about a boy named Brandon who had hard trouble with his sister, so his mother said if his sister got into anything, she will do the cleaning. I like this story because my little brother always gets into everything, too." -- Antonique Peterson, Running Brook Elementary "The 'Magnificent Mummy Maker' by Elvira Woodruff is about a boy named Andy Manetti, who has a stepbrother named Jason. Andy calls Jason 'Mr. Gifted' because he can do everything better than Andy.

The two friends hung out at least twice a week. Brian O'Neil Jones, a popular high school coach, and Alfred Winborne Jr., a mortgage consultant, bonded on the basketball court eight years before they were together for the last time one night in November 2005. The two had just left a bar on a well-lighted street in Canton about 1:30 a.m. when a man approached them carrying a rifle with a scope. Winborne, testifying this week in the Baltimore Circuit Court trial of the man charged with killing Jones, said the armed man yelled a profanity and then fired four shots as the two friends ran in opposite directions.

James Cameron, 92, who survived an attempted lynching by a white mob and went on to found America's Black Holocaust Museum, died Sunday in Milwaukee. In 1930, in Marion, Ind., Mr. Cameron, who was then age 16 and worked shining shoes, and two friends were arrested and accused of killing a white man during a robbery and raping the man's companion. A mob took them out of jail and hanged Mr. Cameron's two friends, then placed a rope around his neck. "They began to chant for me like a football player, `We want Cameron, we want Cameron,'" he recalled in a 2003 interview with the Associated Press.