Every time Marcia Price's next-door neighbor shouted a racial epithet at her, the immigrant from Guyana put up a small wooden cross outside her Rosedale home to ward off evil -- until she ran out of space.
Ultimately, she put up 15 crosses, while enduring three years of racial harassment that began with a dispute over a dog and escalated to death threats, an attack with a shovel and the spraying of Price with a garden hose when she was pregnant.
Price, a polite, soft-spoken black woman, says she finally feels safe now that her neighbor, 56-year-old Benjamin Mosetti, is behind bars. On Friday, Mosetti, who is white, was sentenced to 18 months in jail after being convicted in Baltimore County District Court of assault with a deadly weapon, harassment and a hate crime.
The incidents brought neighbors even closer in the tight-knit, racially integrated community in the 8600 block of Wilenoak Court, as residents took a stand to protect Price.
"It was God and my neighbors who helped me survive this," said Price, 36, who lives with her two sons, ages 13 and 6 weeks, and her 74-year-old mother.
The ordeal "only united us more as new homeowners," said James A. Lofton, who lives across the street. "We had a common concern. We had a person who was being attacked. As a definition of neighbors, we had to pull together."
Mosetti's lawyer, Edward T. Pinder, said this week that he has appealed the case and will have it tried in Circuit Court. But Price sees Friday's conviction as a victory after years of feeling like a prisoner in her home.
Price said the trouble began in early 1996, shortly after Mosetti moved in next door with his wife and son. Price went to her new neighbors to complain about their large dog running loose.
Responding with racial slurs and curses, Mosetti told her, "If you don't like it, build a fence," recalled Price, a health care administrator who moved to this country in 1983. "I was floored by the response. The more I ignored them, the more it escalated."
Price built the fence shortly after that, and began marking it and her yard with crosses, a sign of protection in Price's native Guyana, she said.
She became so fearful, she said, that her neighbors "used to take turns watching me so I could go out in my yard and water the plants." She especially remembers one white neighbor shouting at Mosetti from her window to stop harassing Price.
"I felt really good that a Caucasian person was getting involved," she said.
The once-quiet community of 13 homes just off Golden Ring Road became a well-traveled route for county police cruisers -- and even FBI agents -- who came to investigate the alleged assaults and possible civil rights violations.
Mosetti was charged with second-degree assault, assault with a deadly weapon, harassment and also with committing a racially motivated hate crime, under a little-used state statute.
And Friday, as some of Price's neighbors watched, Mosetti was sentenced by Judge G. Darrell Russell to 18 months in the Baltimore County Detention Center. He also was ordered to serve three years' probation after his release and to have no contact with Price.
Mosetti's lawyer said he plans to challenge the constitutionality of the state's hate crime law in Circuit Court. Mosetti remains in jail.
Price's racial harassment complaints are being investigated by the Maryland Human Relations Commission and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Fair Housing Act, said her lawyer, Andrew D. Freeman.
Freeman also said the FBI is investigating the possibility of a violation of a federal civil rights violation.
For the neighbors who stood by Price, there was little question about what they had been called to do.
"It isn't the case of white, black, green or purple," said Fran Shott, who lives two doors away from Price. "It's a case of right or wrong. How could [Price] live like that? You had to rally around what is right -- and she was right."
Pub Date: 3/10/99