Young Man

PRINCE FREDERICK -- More than seven years after being arrested and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit, a 31-year-old borderline retarded man walked out of the Calvert County Courthouse yesterday, free.With his first breaths of regained freedom, Anthony Gray Jr. shed the two county deputies escorting him to the courthouse lobby and squeezed into the waiting arms of his weeping mother, Corine Reed. "Thank the Lord, thank the Lord, thank the Lord," she said and brushed the tears from her cheeks onto her son's shoulder as they swayed, hugging.

A young man who hinted he had a concealed weapon robbed the Dobbin Center Mobil gas station and convenience store in Columbia just after 10 p.m. Friday night.Howard County police said the man waited around the store for 30 minutes before confronting the clerk, demanding money and implying he had a weapon.The clerk opened the cash register and gave the robber an undetermined amount of money. The man then fled.Police described the suspect as a 6-foot-tall black man in his 20s with a light complexion, wearing a red T-shirt and blue denim shorts.

Editor's note: Misunderstanding his wife's instructions, an old man sets out for a party with a door on his back.This is the story of an old man in a little village who was good at working in the garden, but terrible at listening to his wife.On Saturday, while he was giving their dog, Coco, a bath on the porch, his wife came out of the house dressed in her best clothes. She was off to her comadre's for a barbecue."I don't want you to be late, viejo," she warned."I won't," he promised. "Just let me finish here."

A young man was killed and another wounded near Morgan State University in Northeast Baltimore just before midnight last night when nearly a dozen gunshots rang out near Hillen and Pent-wood roads.Witnesses said they heard tires screeching about 11: 45 p.m. and then saw two young men run from a blue Honda and begin banging on doors in the 1600 block of Pent-wood Road for help. One of the men was declared dead on a Pent-wood Road porch, and the other was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment.

The Jason Altman who picks up his diploma today at Johns Hopkins University is not the same young man who arrived in Baltimore four years ago. So much has happened since then, so much to change him from a potential scientist to an artist with a job waiting for him in New York City."

Martin O'Malley, the charismatic politician, says that at midnight Monday, the eve of the announcement of his candidacy for mayor, a young man offered to sell him drugs at the corner of Harford Road and the Alameda, by statute a drug-free zone in the city of Baltimore. Too good to be true? Symbolism beyond the dreams of the most creative speechwriter?He and his brother, Peter, were scouting the location of his Tuesday morning announcement, O'Malley said. They wanted to make sure there was enough room on the sidewalk for reporters and supporters.

SO I VISITED MY SON at college on Parents Weekend, which is a nice event that colleges hold so that parents will have a chance to feel old. I started feeling old the moment I got to my son's housing unit and saw a sign on the door that said: End World Hunger Today. This reminded me that there was a time in my life, decades ago, when I was so full of energy that I was going to not only End World Hunger, but also Stop War and Eliminate Racism. Whereas today my life goals, to judge from the notes I leave myself, tend to be along the lines of Buy Detergent.

A HOMELESS man recently walked into our Department of Housing and Urban Development offices on Howard Street, where he was interviewed by a community-builder fellow.During their conversation, the HUD fellow learned that the young man would soon lose his job and needed a place to live.The fellow, who was trained as a nurse, suspected the man had a medical problem because he was sweating profusely and experiencing some lightheadedness. He told her that he suffered from high blood pressure.The HUD fellow not only helped this man locate housing, but she also referred him to a Johns Hopkins Hospital program for hypertensive young black males.

He is a young man, only 25, although there's no way of knowing this from his appearance. Fire has excavated almost to the bone both his face and body. Still, even in his blunted features, agony has found a way to express itself. The young man's suffering is captured in the flickering black-and-white images of a grainy tape filmed in a Texas hospital 25 years ago.Once, Donald Cowart was an Air Force pilot who flew jets in and out of Vietnam; a handsome, strong-willed man with a passion for driving fast in his Alfa Romeo.

I ONCE HEARD a father describe how he greeted his daughter's dates and I have never forgotten his inspired approach.He composed several innocuous questions -- what sports do you like, are you thinking about college, how are your grades, what do your parents do, -- and then wrote the questions on the side of a baseball bat.When the young man arrived to pick up his daughter, the father asked the young man to take a walk with him so they could get to know...

The following is a selection of reader comments about a recent fatal shooting downtown near Camden Yards from The Baltimore Sun's crime blog, baltimoresun.com/crimewatch. I lived in The Redwood at the corner of Eutaw and Redwood for two years during my time at UM Law. This is about the least surprising thing I've read to come out of Baltimore in a long time, and really was only a matter of time. Those of us who lived in this block of Eutaw were always shocked at the total lack of police enforcement of the rowdy, obscene and violent crowds who would pour out of the Upper Deck bar and the Goddess strip club on all nights of the week.

The format of the second presidential debate was described as that of a town hall meeting, but it was pure TV from the "citizens" seated on risers on a brightly lit stage, to the candidates moving about a stage like performers. In TV terms, body language and modes of address were never more important. John McCain lived up to his reputation for excelling in town hall meetings, quickly establishing a soft-spoken intimate relationship with the audience even as he attacked his opponent - two things experts say you are not supposed to be able to do simultaneously.

Everyone wants to meet the new guy. And so as Benjamin Todd Jealous works the room at Baltimore's Annie E. Casey Foundation, there is a receiving line of sorts that forms everywhere he turns. Roslyn M. Brock, vice chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's National Board of Directors, squires the 35-year-old Californian around the reception on the second day of his new job. He is the 17th CEO and president of the NAACP, "the youngest in our history, and THAT is something," she says as applause fills the room.

He pointed the gun in my face a few minutes before 5 a.m. . The gun was similar to the ones carried by the police. He was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and he mumbled, "This is for real," or something similar. I had just started my daily two-mile exercise walk around Union Square Park on a recent Tuesday. When you walk at 5 a.m., you escape the heat and the dangerous rays of the sun. When the young man stopped me, I was directly across the street from the front door of Steuart Hill Academic Academy, the school where Mayor Sheila Dixon once taught.

Did it ever occur to you, while driving around Baltimore and its environs, that respect for Maryland's traffic laws had evaporated like dry ice left out on a July afternoon? Have you ever wondered why? For a large part of the answer, you need look no further than the District Court of Maryland. Believe me, if you get a traffic ticket in Maryland, go to court. If your offense is severe enough, the judge might turn down your sheets and put a chocolate on your pillow. Here's an example from a courtroom I visited recently: Three straight cases come before a Catonsville judge.

He devoted much of his childhood in Africa either to playing sports or watching television, but Boubacar Coly can speak eight languages with ease. He is Muslim by faith but attended Catholic schools much of his life and even a Catholic university for a time. He grew up on a continent where soccer is king, but his heart led him to basketball and the United States. Incongruous as those facts seem, they are mere snapshots of a young man who forged a life in the United States when everyone back in Ziguinchor, Senegal, told him not to leave seven years ago. Factor in three major knee surgeries, two lost seasons of college basketball, a new wife and a reinvigorated career at Morgan State, and it still doesn't cover the journey Coly has taken.

WHAT YOU SAY One of my favorites is also one of Will Smith's first - Six Degrees of Separation. Smith showed that he had a future in acting in this movie. Starring with veterans Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland, Smith held his own and gave a very believable performance. This movie was not mainline cinema, and many people have never heard of it, but it is well worth watching. Smith plays a young man trying to survive by pretending he is the son of famous parents and befriending a young man with rich parents in order to live the lifestyle he so desires.

A young man shot Tuesday night outside a house in Baltimore's Central Park Heights neighborhood died yesterday morning at Sinai Hospital, city police said. Northwestern District officers investigating a report of a man shot in the 3300 block of St. Ambrose Ave. about 9 p.m. found Davon Sampson, 18, of the 3400 block of Alto Road bleeding from at least one bullet wound to the abdomen, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. Police had no suspect or motive, Moses said.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Sen. George Allen, Republican of Virginia, was caught on tape referring to a campaign worker for his Democratic opponent, James Webb, as a "macaca." The campaign worker, S.R. Sidarth, is East Indian, and it was quickly noted that the word "macaca" is considered a racial slur in some European countries. Macaques are monkeys and, thus, the derivative "macaca" is considered racially insensitive. Mr. Allen said he didn't mean to be offensive and was just joshing with the young man, but The Washington Post twice treated the incident as front-page news, and one of its columnists, Eugene Robinson, unburdened himself in 770 words hinting, if not at Mr. Allen's supposed racial insensitivity, then at his stupidity.

A young man was killed and two teenage boys were wounded early yesterday in North Baltimore's Harwood neighborhood when at least one man opened fire on the trio as they sat on the front steps of a rowhouse, city police said. Officers responding to a call for gunfire about 1 a.m. in the 400 block of Ilchester Ave. -- off Greenmount Avenue -- found two boys, ages 16 and 17, wounded on the steps and the man -- 23-year-old Ryan J. Teel of the 3000 block of Mayfield Ave. -- dead, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman.