Baltimore News

Maryland House minority leader Tony O'Donnell says Gov. Martin O'Malley and Democrats in the state legislature are trying to scare voters into supporting a November referendum authorizing slot machine gambling.

Former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich said police must use discretion in deciding on surveillance of activists.

A Baltimore city grand jury indicted a city police officer Tuesday on charges of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man he was questioning in Northeast Baltimore in January, according to the state's attorney's office. It is only the second time since 1996 that a Baltimore officer has been indicted in an on-duty police-involved shooting. The January shooting was one of 16 by city officers this year that have resulted in a dozen fatalities, one short of the number killed in all of last year. Officer Tommy Sanders III, 37, is expected to surrender to authorities, city prosecutors said in a statement released after the indictment was returned. He is a six-year veteran of the force. Paul Blair, the head of the city's Fraternal Order of Police, described Sanders as 'very upset' and added: 'He's got a family. ... He lives in the city, the type of police we want working in this department. Hopefully, he will have a fair day in court and all of the facts will come out.' Sanders is charged with shooting Edward Lamont Hunt, a 27-year-old man he had deemed suspicious and had stopped about noon in the Hamilton Park Shopping Center on Northern Parkway.

A Capitol Heights-based scrap metal processor has purchased a Baltimore County scrapyard and is pushing to build an export terminal in Curtis Bay to meet a surge in demand from the global steel industry. Joseph Smith & Sons Inc. began operations this week at the former Recovermat Mid-Atlantic LLC demolition waste facility in Halethorpe, retaining its 20 workers. Smith Vice President Bob Bonnes said the company is converting the facility into a shredding plant for autos and steel scrap. Smith's larger project is to open the Curtis Bay export terminal by mid-2009. It would become the first terminal in years to ship scrap iron and steel from the port of Baltimore. 'Our major interest in this property is obviously to get our scrap metal loaded and out of this country,' said Bonnes, who brought an international focus when he joined Smith in February 2007. 'It gives us access to the world, not just the U.S.' Rapid development in China and India has resulted in an increase in the price of the recycled metals used to make steel. Scrap from the West Coast and Australia feeds the Asian industry, and the East Coast is responding to growing demand from Mediterranean markets. Turkey, an export market targeted by Smith, is the world's biggest buyer of scrap for its production of steel for the Middle East, Bonnes said. Smith envisions local steel mills, such as the one in Sparrows Point and others in Pennsylvania and Delaware, buying shredded scrap directly from its new Halethorpe processor. The 27-acre Curtis Bay terminal, at the end of Asiatic Avenue just east of the CSX coal and ore piers, could also serve local steelmakers and process shipments of salt, bulk liquid and other commodities, Bonnes said. Smith operates a small scrap export site in Wilmington, Del., but the Prince George's County company focuses on the domestic market. To build the Baltimore terminal, Smith and joint-venture partner Port Contractors Inc. of Wilmington need final approval and permits from the city, the Army Corps of Engineers and the MarylandDepartment of the Environment. 'We are developing it looking to minimize the amount of dredging to limit the impact on the bay and the costs,' Bonnes said. 'We have a clean bill of health to go forward.' The site, formerly the Amoco Baltimore Asphalt Terminal, has been subject to environmental audits and cleanup efforts through the MDE.

Gov. Martin O'Malley Friday said Maryland authorities will no longer spy on political issue groups if there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Baltimore's health commissioner says a heat alert has been issued for Saturday and Sunday.

A young woman fights for her life Wednesday night after she's shot in a Baltimore County park and somehow walks a mile to get help.

An alleged gang member has been charged with attempted murder in the shooting of an 18-year-old at Robert E. Lee Park yesterday.

Undercover Maryland state police officers infiltrated meetings of peace and anti-death penalty groups for more than a year, according to documents released Thursday by the state chapter of the American Civil ...

A 42-year-old man has been charged with going on a bank robbery spree in downtown Baltimore yesterday morning -- holding up two downtown banks and trying to rob a third within a span of three hours, a city police spokesman said today.

Lamont E. Brown of the 300 block of E. Lanvale St. was charged with three counts of bank robbery and is being held in the Baltimore City Detention Center.

Sterling Clifford, a police spokesman, said an officer monitoring live surveillance camera feed saw the suspect walking along downtown Commerce Street late yesterday afternoon, matched his picture with one taken at a bank and radioed officers to make the arrest.

A Baltimore fire official says a fire in a first-floor classroom at the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore is under investigation.

An Anne Arundel County Police officer has been shot in South Baltimore. It happened around 7 a.m. on Audrey Ave.

Firefighters and BGE crews hope to extinguish an electrical fire under the streets of downtown Baltimore by Tuesday morning.

Two Baltimore County men have been charged in the death of a 23-year-old Howard County man who was found shot in a Columbia parking lot in May, police said today.

City police were investigating two overnight homicides yesterday, including the stabbing of a 17-year old boy allegedly at the hands of his older half brother, a police spokeswoman said.

The father of a teenager accused of bludgeoning his mother to death says he'll do everything he can to support his son.

Benjamin Civiletti, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and former U.S. attorney general who once called for a national moratorium on capital punishment, will head a state commission studying the death penalty in ...

Police were investigating Saturday to determine whether a child's body recovered from the Baltimore Harbor belonged to a 3-year-old whose father confessed to throwing the boy off the Francis Scott Key Bridge in ...

A 22-year-old Randallstown man has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with a road-rage shooting that killed a 16-year-old girl and a 32-year-old man near Bolton Hill, records ...

A Baltimore police department spokesman says a city officer was thrown from his horse in Little Italy but wasn't seriously injured.