Virginia State Police

Baltimore police yanked scores of bulletproof vests from the street after tests found they were defective, and today Maryland's top law enforcement officer will recommend that the supplier be barred from doing business with the state.Only a handful of city officers wore the protective gear for about two weeks in August before the city, prompted by concerns of a local police supply store owner, had the vests tested at a firing range, officials said."Those vests were taken off the street immediately," said Sam Ringgold, a city police spokesman.

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.

With police closing in, an Arnold man committed suicide in Virginia yesterday, five hours after killing a 21-year-old college student who had refused to sell him a dime-store pen in a Severna Park doughnut shop.After stopping on a Norfolk, Va., street with a police cruiser about 100 yards behind his car, Thomas Joseph Cummings, 24, raised a 9 mm handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. He died instantly.The pen he had killed for was still in his victim's pocket back in Maryland, Anne Arundel County 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.

Four Maryland men were charged in Virginia yesterday with weapons violations after a high-speed cat-and-mouse game along Interstate 95 ended when they allegedly fired three blasts from a sawed-off shotgun into the cab of a tractor-trailer.Randy Thomas Schultz, 21, of Annapolis, John A. Harrison, 20, with no fixed address, and Linwood Nathan Thomas, 20, and Kenneth Anthony Banks, 26, both of Landover, were arrested on charges of malicious shooting into an occupied vehicle and use of a firearm in a felony.

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.

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.