Identity of slain man sought
Police said yesterday they are seeking help in identifying a man who was found shot to death on a vacant lot in West Baltimore on Saturday morning.
The victim was found about 9 a.m. on his back in the 1600 block of W. Lafayette Ave., where he was pronounced dead, a police spokesman said. He had been shot at least once in the chest, according to the spokesman, Officer Troy Harris.
The man was one of two homicide victims that day. About an hour later, 19-year-old Victor Couther of the 1300 block of E. Lafayette Ave. was fatally shot in the 1600 block of E. Federal St. in East Baltimore, police said.
Through today, 16 people have been killed in Baltimore, compared with 30 during the same period last year.
Gus G. Sentementes
3 teens charged with vandalism
Three male Baltimore Highlands residents, two of them juveniles, have been arrested and charged with shooting out the windows of at least 45 vehicles parked on streets early Monday in Baltimore Highlands and at a park-and-ride on South Rolling Road in Catonsville.
The three are also being looked at in connection with similar acts of vandalism against 30 vehicles in Howard County the same day, Baltimore County police said.
Someone saw a 1999 Dodge Intrepid in the area of the shootings in Baltimore Highlands and called police.
A short time later, Officer Joseph Kamberger of the Wilkens Precinct stopped a car containing three males on Annapolis Road. In the car were two BB guns.
Arrested and charged with multiple counts of destruction of property and held at the county Detention Center in Towson on $30,000 bail was Nicholas Mielke, 18, of the 4400 block of Scotia Road.
Two youths, 16 and 17, were charged as juveniles.
Richard Irwin
Drug conviction nets 4 years
An Anne Arundel County man, who was acquitted on vehicular manslaughter charges in the 2006 death of a 19-year-old girl, was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison on drug charges, prosecutors said.
Judge Paul Goetzke sentenced Corey Contee, 37, of an unknown address, to the maximum penalty allowed under the law for one count of cocaine possession and two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia. In addition to his prison term, Contee was fined $26,000.
Contee was high and drunk when he crashed Sarah Elizabeth Patterson's Ford Explorer on Sept. 4, 2006, in Lothian, authorities said. The SUV struck a guardrail and flipped four times, killing Patterson, of Chesapeake Beach. A jury acquitted Contee of vehicular manslaughter in December.
Nicole Fuller
Man sentenced to life for killing
A 20-year-old West Baltimore man was sentenced yesterday to life in prison plus 20 years for killing a man in Southwest Baltimore, according to city prosecutors.
During the trial, Davon Pearson, his fiancee and his mother testified that he had been at a neighborhood candlelight vigil to protest violence among young men and then at his fiancee's house at the time Howard Jones was shot in the back of the head.
According to prosecutors, Pearson, of the 800 block of Vine St., met with someone identified only as "Bobby" who asked Pearson to "take care of a problem" in exchange for an ounce of cocaine. On Aug. 3, 2006, "Bobby" provided Pearson with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Pearson then trailed Jones and shot him, according to prosecutors.
A jury convicted Pearson on Dec. 10.
Circuit Judge Kaye Allison sentenced Pearson to life in prison for conspiracy to commit murder, a concurrent 30 years for second-degree murder and a consecutive 20 years on a handgun charge.
Melissa Harris
Woman gets 16 years in death of husband
A 47-year-old Joppa woman who admitted killing her husband has been sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, according to court records.
Eveline Annmaria Bergmann entered the plea Jan. 30 before Harford County Judge William O. Carr.
According to a transcript of her interview with a Harford County sheriff's deputy, Bergmann and her husband, Jeffrey David Bergmann, 48, had returned home after a night of drinking Dec. 15, 2006, when he told her that he was bisexual. Bergmann then told him that she had once had an extramarital affair, angering her husband, who demanded a divorce, according to the transcript.
Bergmann said she stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife, and also cut him on the wrist and ankles, according to the interview transcript. "I can't believe that I had done that 'cause he's the man I love," she told police. "I can't say I was too rational. I just got really upset and mad and reacted without thinking too much about it."
Dozens of her friends and co-workers wrote letters to the judge pleading for leniency.
The prosecutor and Bergmann's defense attorney said she will be eligible for parole after serving half of her sentence and will be given credit for the 13 months she spent in prison.
"It was a complicated, gut-wrenching decision, and ultimately, she was the one who decided" to plead guilty rather than going to trial, said defense attorney Timothy Gunning.
Bergmann, a part-time library assistant, emigrated from the Netherlands and had been married for 18 years, according to court records. In a letter addressed to her dead husband, Bergmann apologized, stating: "I hope he looks down on me and will forgive me for what happened."
Madison Park