Tag Archive: Maryland


It’s hard to believe, but you can buy a house in Silver Spring (not Silver Springs), Maryland, in which three people have died in the last decade.

Check out the story from the NBC 4 website:

>>If you knew three people had been killed at a house, would you buy it?

Brian Betts wouldn’t have bought his Silver Spring, Md., home had he known that a man and his daughter were killed there.

Betts, the popular principal at Shaw at Garnet-Patterson Middle School, was found dead in an upstairs bedroom in his home April 15, 2010. He’d connected with the gunman who killed him, Alante Saunders, the previous day via a social chat line. Saunders and two other teenagers went to Betts’s home with the understanding that the door would be left unlocked, police said. They entered and Saunders went upstairs. He pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to life with all but 40 years suspended.

When Betts bought the two-story brick colonial at 9337 Columbia Blvd. on July 2, 2003, it had already been the scene of a double homicide. On Aug. 6, 2002, a 9-year-old girl was pistol whipped and shot and killed at point blank range by a man who’d broken into the house. Her father, Gregory Russell, was shot six times and also died.

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I’ll never understand the desire to damage someone or something else. If I don’t like what’s being done, I get away from it. Why a person decides it is time to hurt someone else is beyond me.

Recently, there was a beating of transgender person in a McDonalds in Maryland, where I live. Here’s the latest on that story from thewashingtonpost.com:

>>Community Rallies Around Victim Of McDonalds Attack

The woman who was attacked in a Baltimore County McDonald’s last week thanked the woman who stepped in and tried to help, as more than a hundred supporters gathered at the Rosedale restaurant Monday night. The rally drew together representatives of transgender, civil-rights and faith-based communities in a call to action to stop violence against all people.

“I’ll never forget you for this,” Renee Polis told Vicky Thoms, who was hit in the face as she stepped between Chrissy Polis and the two teens who were caught on video punching and kicking Polis, and dragging her by her hair until Polis appears to have a seizure.

The attack was filmed by a McDonald’s employee and was first posted on YouTube last week. Despite being removed from the video-sharing site, it quickly went viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views after being linked from several websites, including the Drudge Report.

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I keep reading that we’re not in a recession any longer, but you couldn’t tell it by my budget or the local economy.

Here’s a story about where I live–Montgomery County, Maryland–and how the once-prosperous government is having to deal with reduced income:

>>Montgomery braces for eyesores, safety hazards with new budget cuts

Filthy bathrooms. Tall grass. Legions of potholes.

Some analysts say those images of disrepair will become commonplace throughout Montgomery County, with widespread cuts proposed by County Executive Ike Leggett.

“[County] Council staff is concerned about the cleanliness and condition of county facilities, such as recreation centers, community centers, libraries and health care and day care facilities,” a staff memo says. “There are public health concerns and also concerns about loss of revenue that will occur if people stop participating in fee-supported activities or leasing space because of the condition of the facilities.”

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When I first heard that someone had gone to the Discovery Channel with a gun and taken hostages, I joked that the man must have wanted more “Shark Weeks” or something. But it turned out to be no laughing matter.

Here’s the story from The Daily Mail:

>>A gunman has been shot dead by police after taking a number of hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland, U.S., after his idea for a television show was rejected.

All three of James Jay Lee’s hostages managed to escape safely. At least one device appeared to explode as he was gunned down.

Lee walked into the main entrance of the building at 1pm today waving a gun and wearing what appeared to be metallic canisters strapped to his front and back.

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