Virginia State Police

Odd coincidences in the slayings of two Virginia children and Johns Hopkins University graduate student Alicia Showalter Reynolds have made Reynolds' mother wonder if the same pickup truck driver is involved in both cases."

Two Baltimore-area residents were killed in a small plane crash in Virginia on Saturday, the Virginia State Police said Sunday. The men were identified as Berry Raymond Newgent, 73, of Davidsonville, and Thomas Berry Newgent, 51, of Westminster. Berry Raymond Newgent was the pilot and owner of the experimental plane, and Thomas Berry Newgent the passenger, police said. The plane attempted to land several times, likely at a nearby airstrip, and crashed in a field in Suffolk, police said.

Cops are starting to talk like the rest of us. The Maryland State Police became the latest law enforcement agency to throw out its cryptic language, directing officers this week to stop telling each other "10-4" and instead just say "OK. " It's a transformation of seismic proportions — veteran officers who in the academy had to memorize the codes and got in trouble for calling in "livestock on highway" instead of a "10-54" will now have revert...

Cops are starting to talk like the rest of us. The Maryland State Police became the latest law enforcement agency to throw out its cryptic language, directing officers this week to stop telling each other "10-4" and instead just say "OK. " It's a transformation of seismic proportions — veteran officers who in the academy had to memorize the codes and got in trouble for calling in "livestock on highway" instead of a "10-54" will now have revert...

Merle Unger Jr., the Hagerstown cop-killer who has made a criminal career out of escaping from prisons, was apprehended today during a high-speed police chase near Strasburg, Va., authorities said.Unger, 41, was injured when the car he was driving to elude Virginia State Police veered out of control on an exit ramp from Interstate 81 and crashed near Strasburg, about 60 miles southwest of Washington.Officials said Unger was listed in fair condition at Winchester Medical Center after surgery for head and facial injuries.

Police killer and escape artist Merle Unger Jr. was listed in fair condition at the Winchester Medical Center following a high-speed car chase that led to his capture by the Virginia state police.The 41-year-old Unger, who has escaped from prison a total of eight times, was on one-to-one guard in his hospital room last night, a hospital official said.Unger was being treated for cuts to his face, a fractured nose and a fractured vertebra that he received when the stolen 1982 Lincoln Town Car he was driving flipped over while he was being chased by the Virginia state police at 7:15 yesterday morning.

When the Virginia State Police began publishing the names and addresses of the state's violent sex offenders on the Internet Dec. 29, law enforcement officials thought a few extra citizens might log onto their normally peaceful Web site.What they got was a stampede -- more than 260,000 visitors in the first week, enough to make the Web site all but inaccessible for several days.Maryland authorities, who keep their list of sex offenders on paper, are pondering whether to put theirs online too. "We'll be watching what happens in Virginia with great interest," said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which maintains the state's master list of sex offenders.

An enraged man allegedly fired bullets into a car and a Severn mobile home yesterday, then led police on a high-speed chase pTC into Virginia before ramming his minivan into two state police cars, authorities said.Arrested and charged with malicious wounding, attempted malicious wounding, reckless driving and speeding to elude police was Kevin A. Lupton, 30, of the 500 block of Short Curve Road in Glen Burnie, police said.Mr. Lupton's wife, Carol, and their children, Anthony, 4, and Stephen, 11 months, also were in the minivan, police said.

A former guard at the Maryland Correctional Training Center and his wife, charged in Virginia last month with 70 counts of drug possession with intent to distribute, were charged by Anne Arundel County police yesterday with forging prescriptions at a Glen Burnie pharmacy.Police said Ira Braswell Jr., 53, and Sarah J. Braswell, 51, of Winchester, Va., forged prescriptions at drugstores in Virginia and West Virginia, Baltimore, Hagerstown, Glen Burnie and Odenton."We only have a small part of it here," said Sgt. John Santana, supervisor of the county's police pharmaceutical unit.

Two Baltimore-area residents were killed in a small plane crash in Virginia on Saturday, the Virginia State Police said Sunday. The men were identified as Berry Raymond Newgent, 73, of Davidsonville, and Thomas Berry Newgent, 51, of Westminster. Berry Raymond Newgent was the pilot and owner of the experimental plane, and Thomas Berry Newgent the passenger, police said. The plane attempted to land several times, likely at a nearby airstrip, and crashed in a field in Suffolk, police said.

A skydiver who died in what police believe was an accident over the weekend was identified Monday as Command Sgt. Maj. Harry Parrish, 53, of Fort Meade. An Army Reservist on active duty, Parrish was in charge of training for Army Reserves and Guard members in the 1st Army Division East at Fort Meade, according to Army spokeswoman Raina Williams. He was well-known at Fort Meade, as the division includes nine brigades east of the Mississippi River, and Fort Meade is the training site for most of them bound for Iraq, Afghanistan and other duties.

The victims of Monday's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech ranged from a professor who had survived the Holocaust to the most typical of undergraduates. But the apparent killer, students learned yesterday, was anything but typical - a senior who instructors and classmates believed was disturbed. As new details emerged about 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui and Monday's shooting attacks in Blacksburg, Va., a stricken campus gathered yesterday to grieve after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday that the city will pay for the funeral of a 17-year-old Northwest Baltimore student who accidentally drowned last week during a school field trip to a remote location deep in the West Virginia woods. Dixon said the offer is one the city tends to make "for individuals' families in cases like that." Kenneth Jones, father of the boy of the same name who died, said he will accept the offer but still has unanswered questions concerning the circumstances surrounding his son's drowning.

Robin Blake hugged her son for the last time after dinner Sunday night. The boy, Kenneth Jones, had spent much of the weekend at his parents' Westport home, playing basketball with his brother and preparing for a West Virginia camping trip with his high school classmates. "He loved the outdoors, but he was a city kid," said his father, also named Kenneth Jones. "He was on the right track," said his mother, Robin Blake, tears streaming down her face. Kenneth, 17, and seven other students from Independence School Local 1 in Hampden - an alternative public school for students who have struggled in traditional classrooms - left Baltimore on Tuesday morning.

A 17-year-old Northwest Baltimore boy died in an accidental drowning Wednesday while on a school field trip in remote West Virginia wilderness, city school system officials announced last night. Paramedics needed more than two hours to reach Kenneth Jones, a sophomore at the Independence School Local 1 in Hampden. Tfc. Andrew D. Teter, the investigating officer for the West Virginia State Police, said the swimming hole where the boy was trapped was an "extreme, extreme remote location," more than seven miles from a road.

A former Howard County resident has been indicted in the alleged abduction, assault and robbery of a woman in Prince William County, Va., eight years ago and the prosecutor said the case might be related to a string of similar incidents in the state. Among the cases authorities said might be linked to the incidents is the 1996 abduction and killing of Baltimore doctoral student Alicia Showalter Reynolds. A Prince William grand jury returned an indictment Monday against Darrell David Rice, 36, on abduction with intent to defile, robbery and malicious wounding charges in the February 1996 incident involving a 38-year-old woman.

Virginia State Police hunting for the killer of Alicia Showalter Reynolds yesterday released an artist's drawing of the unidentified man's face and asked for the public's help in finding him."We think the image is very lifelike and we're hopeful someone out there will recognize him," said Lucy Caldwell, a Virginia State Police spokeswoman. "This picture is much more detailed than the earlier sketches."The 35- to 45-year-old man is suspected of killing Reynolds, a Johns Hopkins University doctoral student, after abducting her March 2 from U.S. 29 near Culpeper, Va. He apparently fooled her into thinking something was wrong with her car and offered her a ride, police said.

A former Howard County resident has been indicted in the alleged abduction, assault and robbery of a woman in Prince William County, Va., eight years ago and the prosecutor said the case might be related to a string of similar incidents in the state. Among the cases authorities have linked to the incidents is the 1996 abduction and killing of Baltimore doctoral student Alicia Showalter Reynolds. A Prince William grand jury returned an indictment Monday against Darrell David Rice, 36, on abduction with intent to defile, robbery and malicious wounding charges in the February 1996 incident involving a 38-year-old woman.

A 43-year-old Millersville business owner, suspected of shooting to death his estranged wife and her parents, died at a Virginia hospital last night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police and hospital officials. Jack Lee Durrett was pronounced dead at University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, a day after Diana Kunes Durrett, 40, and her parents, Mary Louise Kunes, 58, and Nathan Wilson Kunes, 61, were found shot to death at Diana Durrett's Pasadena townhouse.