York County

YORK, Pa. - Michael Allen had asked his mother three times whether he could join her on a trip to the grocery store on July 21, 1969. "Just wait here," Allen testified yesterday that his mother told him. "It won't take long. I'll be right back." Standing on the porch of his aunt's house in this southern Pennsylvania factory town, he watched as his mother climbed into the backseat of a white Cadillac with her parents, younger sister and brother-in-law. It was the last time the 9-year-old saw Lillie Belle Allen alive.

A Pennsylvania couple who police say stopped several women in the Timonium area this week to ask directions, then snatched their purses and sped off in a Chevrolet Blazer have been arrested and charged in the robberies. Shawn Ruby, 24, of the first block of Constitution Ave., New Freedom, Pa., and Jessica Lartz, 20, of the same address, were charged yesterday with several counts of assault, robbery and attempted robbery. Police said the couple chose women in their 50s and 60s who were walking to their cars in shopping centers.

A tornado struck a rural section of Cecil County in northeastern Maryland late yesterday, the second to hit the state in five days. The funnel cloud was spotted as it touched down south of the town of Calvert at 5:55 p.m. and tracked northeast toward nearby Blue Ball. At least four homes sustained moderate to extensive damage, and several lost their roofs, according to Mike Dixon of the Cecil County Department of Emergency Services. One home under construction was demolished, one family was displaced, and large trees and utility poles were splintered, snapped or uprooted along a 4 1/2 -mile-long, 200-yard-wide path of destruction.

It seems like it should take more than 35 minutes to get from downtown Baltimore to the cow-studded hillsides of greater Glen Rock, Pa. But it doesn't. So if what you crave is weathered farm buildings, nursing foals, value-priced antiques or a really good mini-doughnut, head north on Interstate 83. You'll be here before you know it. But where is here, actually? If you don't know what you're doing, you can get off at the exit marked Glen Rock and drive for quite a while before you see anything like a mini-doughnut or a 19th-century ceramic crock.

YORK, Pa. - When police investigators talked to Joe Diaczun in 1969 to find out what he knew about the killing of a black preacher's daughter in his neighborhood, he told them he had been asleep in bed and knew nothing about it. His mother backed up his story. But when York County Detective Rodney V. George spoke with Diaczun last year after authorities reopened the investigation into Lillie Belle Allen's death, Diaczun confessed that he lied 31 years earlier. He had actually stuffed pillows under his covers that night to make it look like he was in bed, sneaked out the back window and was on the street when Allen was gunned down by a throng of young, white gang members.

Hours after being arrested last Thursday on murder charges in connection with the 1969 shooting of a black preacher's daughter in York, Pa., Mayor Charlie Robertson called a news conference to declare his innocence and reaffirm his pledge that he would "not be dropping out of any election." But yesterday, Robertson did just that. In a brief letter to the York County Democratic Party chairman, Robertson, 67, announced that he would withdraw as the party's candidate in a bid for his third term as mayor.

The Carroll commissioners are optimistic about plans to build a tower in or near Lineboro that would eliminate a gap in emergency communications. The commissioners were told yesterday that York County officials are supportive of Carroll's plans to build a tower with the aid of Maryland Institute of Emergency Medical Services Systems, which has studied at least six sites in Carroll and southern Pennsylvania. Three sites, two in Pennsylvania and one in Maryland, are under consideration, county officials said.

FELTON, Pa. -- A former Baltimore school teacher was charged yesterday with using a machete in an attack at an elementary school in which the principal, two teachers and six pupils were injured. William Michael Stankewicz, 56, of Johnson City, Tenn., was subdued by school officials and arrested by police about noon after the attack at North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School south of York. He was being held last night on $2 million bond, police said. He is charged with two counts of attempted murder, seven counts of aggravated assault and with bringing a weapon into a school.

`Treasures of America' at Delaware Art Museum Prepare for the Fourth of July with some colorful history. Fifty-four works that trace the transformation of the American Colonies into nationhood between the 1760s and the Civil War are on view starting tomorrow at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. The exhibition, "Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art" features among others early Colonial and federal portraits by John S. Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale and Thomas Sully; landscapes by Thomas Cole, Thomas Birch and Alvan Fisher; and views of old works by Elihu Vedder, Jasper Cropsey and Sanford R. Gifford.

Thirteen men awaiting deportation by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service authorities were transferred to Carroll County yesterday, beginning what jail officials hope will be a long, profitable relationship. The detainees, the first to be housed at the county detention center in Westminster, are making the last stop on their way to Baltimore-Washington International Airport for an escorted flight to their birth countries. By housing them from a few weeks to a few months, Carroll County will be reimbursed by the INS at the rate of more than $63 a day per inmate, Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning said yesterday.