DRUG DEALERS HIDE STASH IN NEIGHBOR'S CAR,
THEN SHOOT HIM, HIS WIFE & ANOTHER MAN
WHEN DRUGS ARE INADVERTENTLY LOST

By Stephen Janis

On the porch of the dilapidated row home sits a lawn chair with a knife nearby.

Seven shotgun shells lay scattered on the street. Broken glass covers the sidewalk.

A barrage of gunfire took the life of a 30-year-old woman and seriously injured a man after drug dealers on the 500 block of Eastlynne Avenue in West Baltimore became enraged over a lost stash, police said.

According to police the dealers had stashed quantities of crack cocaine in the wheel-well of their neighbor's car, unbeknownst to the neighbors.

When the husband of the deceased woman drove off in the car, the drugs were lost, thus beginning a dispute that ended in violence.

WAYNESBORO RESIDENT
IS BELIEVED INVOLVED
IN TWO BANK HEISTS

By Kevin Dayhoff

A Pennsylvania man suspected of being involved in a bank robbery in Carroll County on Monday is being held in the Baltimore County Detention Center on $500,000 bond for charges related to another bank robbery that occurred two days earlier in Cockeysville. The suspect was photographed by a surveillance camera as he held up the New Windsor State Bank near Westminster.

Acting on a tip from a television viewer, three area police agencies from Carroll and Baltimore Counties plus Baltimore City worked together to apprehend Ryan Robert Roberts, 31, of Waynesboro, Pa. (a Franklin County borough approximately 75 miles northwest of Baltimore). He was arrested Tuesday night by the Baltimore Police Department, according to a Carroll County Sheriff’s Office report Wednesday afternoon.

According to a Baltimore County police report on Tuesday, the man who is now suspected of being Roberts was “responsible for robbing the 1st Mariner Bank in the 9800 block of York Road, 21030 [in Cockeysville], August 28 at approximately 12:30 p.m.”

The suspect in the Cockeysville robbery is described in the police report as “a white male, 20-25 years old, 5’7” tall, with a medium build, bald head, and a goatee,” as can be seen in the surveillance-camera video. “He also wears prescription glasses, has a lip piercing, and has a tattoo on the right side of his neck, and numerous tattoos on both forearms,” the report states.

JURY SELECTION SET TO BEGIN THURSDAY
Could take up to a week, prosecutor says

TRIAL MAY CONTINUE INTO OCTOBER

By Alan Z. Forman

The jury trial of three defendants accused of killing former Baltimore City Councilman Kenneth Harris during a botched robbery at a Northwood jazz club in 2008 could continue into the first week of October, the chief prosecutor in the case told Investigative Voice as the court wound up three days of pretrial motions Wednesday.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin Thursday, but because of the holiday weekend and Labor Day Monday, “it will probably take until the end of next week” to pick a jury, said Donald Giblin, chief of the city state's attorney's Homicide Division, who is the lead prosecutor in the trial.

His second chair, Assistant State’s Attorney Cynthia M. Banks, spent the day Wednesday arguing successfully against the suppression of DNA evidence the defense claimed was unfairly prejudicial to their clients.

Baltimore Circuit Court Judge David Ross, who is sitting in by special assignment although retired, ruled against every motion submitted by the defense, allowing prosecutors to proceed with all evidence and witnesses at issue.

However at one point the judge lashed out at Banks when she lowered her eyes and began reading from a notepad: “You look at my face when you’re talking to me!” he demanded, causing the startled prosecutor to pause and then apologize before proceeding.