The first female Episcopal bishop in Maryland has been implicated in a hit-and-run accident that killed a father of two.
Baltimore Police say that officers were called to the “5700 block of Roland Avenue” for a reported car accident Saturday December 27, 2014 around 2:37 p.m.
The police found Thomas Palermo, 41, injured but still alive. He died after bring rushed to Sinai Hospital. Palermo was riding his bicycle with other enthusiasts at the time of the accident. Those cyclists followed the vehicle that struck Palermo and fled the scene until they stopped 58-year-old Bishop Heather Cook.
Diocesan Bishop Eugene Sutton e-mailed members of the clergy to say that Cook then went back to the scene to accept her responsibility in the accident.
“Together with the Diocese of Maryland, I express my deep sorrow over the death of the cyclist and offer my condolences to the victim’s family,” said Bishop Sutton.”Please pray for Mr Palermo, his family and Bishop Cook during this most difficult time.”
Cyclists in the region have been outraged that no charges have yet been filed against Cook. Over 1,700 people have joined a Facebook page campaign calling for police to charge Cook with homicide.
A Maryland community college is again facing a lawsuit for rejecting a student due to his Christian faith.
The American Center for Law and Justice has filed suit against Community College of Baltimore County on behalf of Dustin Buxton after they denied him permission to enter their radiation therapy program.
Buxton had cited his faith during his interview as an applicant.
“During that interview in 2013, Dustin was asked by the CCBC interview panel, ‘What do you base your morals on?’ Dustin replied, ‘My faith,’” ACLJ attorney Michelle Terry outlined in a report this week. “His faith was not mentioned again, yet, in a written review of his interview, the program director, Adrienne Dougherty, stated that Dustin had lost points because ‘[Dustin] also brought up religion a great deal during the interview. Yes, this is a field that involves death and dying; but religion cannot be brought up in the clinic by therapist or students.’”
The ACLJ had filed suit against the same school for denying Brandon Jenkins entry into the same program because of his Christian beliefs.
The Food and Drug Administration said that a federal employee who found six vials of the deadly smallpox virus in a cardboard box in a storage room at a Maryland lab also found hundreds of vials of other diseases.
The samples included influenza, rickettsia (which can cause the lethal Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) and dengue.
FDA official said Wednesday the collection of 327 vials of the various diseases was found at the same time as the smallpox virus vials announced last week.
Testing at the CDC discovered the smallpox viruses in the vial were alive and infectious.
“The fact that these materials were not discovered until now is unacceptable,” said Karen Midthun, of FDA’s director for biologics. “However, upon finding these materials our staff did the right thing – they immediately notified the appropriate authorities who secured the materials and determined there was no exposure.”
The FDA said 32 vials of tissue samples and non-contagious virus were destroyed at the laboratory and the remaining 279 samples were sent to the Department of Homeland Security for storage.
The ban in Maryland on prayers at government meetings praying in Jesus’ name has been lifted by a judge following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling the prayers are Constitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge William D. Quarles, Jr., had previously told the Carroll County Commissioners they could not pray at meetings after a lawsuit from the anti-Christian American Humanist Association. The group had claimed the Commissioners were endorsing a religion by praying.
Quarles had ruled with the anti-Christianists, saying that no specific deity could be mentioned in any kind of official capacity in the meeting.
Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier said that the judge’s order was infringing on [her] First Amendment rights of free speech and religion.
“I’m willing to go to jail over it,” Frazier declared. “[I]f we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America. We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
The Carroll County Commissioners opened their meeting on Tuesday with a prayer in Jesus’ name.
A Maryland county commissioner says she’s ready to go to jail for her faith in Christ.
Robin Bartlett Frazier, a Carroll County commissioner, said that she will refuse to acknowledge a federal judge’s order that the county’s meetings no longer open with prayers that mention Jesus Christ or any deity.
“If we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America,” Robin Bartlett Frazier told CBS. “We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to Communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
The anti-Christian group American Humanist Association had filed a lawsuit in 2012 on behalf of what they claimed were three residents of the county. Judge William Quarles Jr. ruled on Wednesday the board must stop opening meetings with sectarian prayers.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar case.
A man walked into a filled movie theater in Hanover, Maryland and set off fireworks causing a panic when people believed someone was committing a mass shooting.
Police have not been able to identify the man who walked into the Cinemark Movie Theater in Arundel Mills.
“Everybody’s just jumping out of their seats and screaming,” witness Luis Andrade told CBS Baltimore about the explosion’s aftermath. “We saw a gentleman say ‘there’s an emergency exit’ and we ran out.”
Police say it appears that the man who committed the act was pulling a prank.
“The person needs to be held responsible and brought to justice (even if a prank),” Lt. TJ Smith told reporters.
Police obtained photos of an African-American man wearing a red bandanna that they believe to have set off the homemade explosive device. They are asking the public’s help in trying to track him down.
A woman trying to rush to the hospital on foot because she was in labor was robbed at gunpoint yesterday.
The woman was rushing to nearby Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Maryland around 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning under assistance of a man when the two gunmen confronted them.
Multiple witnesses called the police who rushed to the scene. The gunmen fled in a stolen vehicle but were quickly apprehended. Police were able to recover the weapon used in the robbery.
Devery Kelley, 24, and Cornell Robinson, 44, are being held pending charges.
Mother and child are doing fine according to WJZ, CBS 13.
Ocean City, Maryland is abuzz with speculation after a series of tremors that resembled an earthquake shook the town and neighboring communities.
One resident reported the boom that accompanied the strange quaking was so loud that it “sounded like somebody blew something up.” Bart Rader told the Baltimore Sun a 50-pound metal sculpture on his wall began shaking.
Geologists claim the tremors were not the result of an earthquake and speculated that supersonic jets from the Paxuxent Naval Air Station caused sonic booms. However, no station officials could confirm flights massing Ocean City.
“We’ve had sonic booms in town before, but this seemed different,” firefighter Michael Maykrantz said. “It was more sustained, and then there was a pause for about a minute and then it started again.”
Seismologists also said the tremor was not a result of a frost quake which has been happening during this frigid winter.
The gunman who walked into a Maryland shopping mall and shot two people inside a skateboard store reportedly was just looking to kill.
Police say that Darion Aguilar had a journal where he wrote that he was looking to kill people and that he was ready to die. The journal didn’t name anyone specifically that Aguilar wanted to kill but he mentioned having a “general hatred of others.”
He also wrote in the journal that he needed to seek help from a mental health professional but that he had not talked with his family about that need.
Detectives who have been going through Aguilar’s computer, cell phone and journal say that there is absolutely no connection to the two people he gunned down. There is also nothing that indicates why he chose the skateboard shop Zumiez for his rampage.
Police released new information yesterday that said Aguilar assembled his shotgun in the dressing room of the store and then opened fire.
Two young foster children in Tennessee were granted a “Christmas miracle” when a prayer sent into the sky this summer was answered.
Eva, 6, and Jasmine, 8, were taking part in Vacation Bible School at the church they attended in east Tennessee. The children were told to put a prayer request inside a balloon that would be inflated with helium and released into the air.
So the girls wrote a note asking God to allow them to be adopted by the foster parents who had been caring for them during the last two months. The balloon was released with 30 others.
None of the balloons were ever heard from again…except for Eva and Jasmine’s.
The balloon made its way to a trailer park in McHenry, Maryland. The people who found the balloon mailed it back to the girl’s foster parents, Lynn and Dennis.
Lynn told WBIR-TV and the Christian Post the balloon being found was a message from God that she and her husband should adopt the girls. They had been praying for God’s direction and felt the balloon was confirmation they were to follow their hearts.
On Tuesday, a judge legally made the girls the daughters of Lynn and Dennis.