Storm pummels Cecil County!

Heavy rain and wind slammed Cecil County on Thursday, leaving behind downed trees and wires and a lot of water.

Flood watches remained in effect overnight, although tornado watches posted Thursday had been canceled by the evening, according to the National Weather Service at Mount Holly, N.J.

Cecil County Public Schools closed early Thursday in anticipation of poor travel conditions. Middle and high school students were dismissed at noon, with elementary schoolers following at 1 p.m.

According to the State Highway Administration Delaware Ave. in Elkton was the only state road closed. However, in Port Deposit, several town streets were closed to traffic because of high water.

Nearly 3,000 Delmarva Power customers in the Rising Sun area lost power at 5:40 p.m. Scattered smaller outages were widespread.

Brown water rushed across Delaware Avenue in Elkton on Thursday, the result of at least 5 inches of rainfall earlier in the day.

With more rain expected overnight, Terry Wright, district engineer for the State Highway Administration, said the work done on the road weeks ago was keeping the flooding from getting worse.

“We’re going to knock the debris away from the bridge,” Wright said. Clearing that would make the Big Elk Creek flow more within its banks, he said.

The state spent $700,000 to raise the road a seven inches and improve drainage. Delaware Avenue has flooded hundreds of times when the creek rose over its banks. As he watched the water rush by, Wright said that road project had done its job.

“It won’t handle major, major flooding,” Wright said. “It was for nuisance flooding.”

He said it appeared that the water level on the road was lower than in other comparable storms due in part to the work completed in early September.

“I think the cleanup will be a lot easier. There’s not going to be as much silt,” he said.

Kerry Anne Abrams, mayor of Port Deposit, looked out her front door on High Street and studied the Susquehanna River.

“You can see the water pushing up river instead of going down,” she said. “Right now what’s hurting us is the surge from the bay.”

A lifetime resident of the town, Abrams takes high water events in stride.

“I’m sure the houses that get water in their basements have water in the basement. Water is lapping over the jetty. It’s not going to take much more for it to go over,” she said, adding that Marina Park was already disappearing. “There’s not much you can do.

“There’s no place for (the water) to go. The drains couldn’t handle it.”

Thursday’s events surrounding Rising Sun’s 150th Anniversary were canceled. Sharon Gregory, spokeswoman for the planning committee, said tonight’s fireworks and concert by Leon Smith and the Sticky Situation Band at Community of Rising Sun Fire Company are expected to continue as planned.

Richard Brooks, the county’s director of emergency operations, said storm surge is also creating flooding problems in Charlestown and Carpenter’s Point.

“One of the campgrounds in Charlestown is under water. They are moving campers and cars to higher ground,” he said.

Brooks opened the emergency operations center, expecting a second wave of flooding overnight.

“There will be another surge (of rain) around 8 p.m. with an additional couple of inches,” he said. When high tide returns around 3:30 a.m. there should be more high water.

The storm followed a long narrow path that carried it just west of Cecil County, Brooks said.

Janney, Sutton set for rematch in sheriff’s race

 

Democrat winner Chris Sutton in front of the tally board.

 

Incumbent Sheriff Barry A. Janney Sr. will square off against Chris Sutton in November’s election after each won his respective primary on Tuesday.

It will mark the second time that Sutton, a corporal in the sheriff’s office, will challenge his boss on a general election ballot. Sutton lost to Janney in 2006.

In Tuesday’s primary, Janney received 3,322 votes on the Republican ballot to defeat challengers Al Michael (932 votes) and Dan Slater (2,011 votes), who, like Sutton, also is a deputy.

“I’m very, very excited,” Janney said on Tuesday night, before adding, “I’m also a little upset over the low voter turnout. I hope more people turn out for the general election.”

Sutton, meanwhile, garnered 3,128 votes on the Democratic ballot to better fellow deputy, Skip DeWitt (1,855 votes) and William Gerczak (594 votes).

“Obviously, this is an honor. This is the first time I actually won the race because last time (2006 primary) I ran unopposed,” Sutton said. “This is a great feeling, and now I’m looking forward to running a good, clean campaign for the general election.”

Sutton also complimented all candidates who fell short.

“My hat goes off to all of them because I know how hard it is to campaign. They should hold their heads up,” Sutton said.

Janney, first elected in 2002, is seeking his third four-year term.

According to Janney, he has been successful in raising salaries of deputies, helping the office move to its new headquarters on Chesapeake Boulevard and overseeing the department as it started investigating traffic accidents on county roads to lessen the burden on Maryland State Police.

Meanwhile, in his campaign, Sutton maintained that crime has been increasing in the county and the sheriff’s office needs to step up anti-drug enforcement, opining that drugs are the root of most of the county’s crime.

He has advocated for a street-level crime unit and crime scene technician to collect evidence at serious crime scenes.

Michael, who served 25 years with the state police and 24 years with the Delaware Air National Guard, was forced to resign as Rising Sun’s police chief in 2008 after three years on the job.

Michael planned to crack down on illegal drugs and establish substations in the western and southern parts of the county.

Slater, a patrol deputy in the sheriff’s office, said he would focus on implementing stronger drug enforcement in the county and also update the office’s equipment.

During his campaign, DeWitt, who joined the sheriff’s office in 1991, said he would spend one day per week at the Cecil County Detention Center. He would also put desk sergeants on the road and assign clerical staff to handle their desk duties.

Gerczak, who spent 27 years as a Baltimore City police officer, said the county is starting to face the same sort of problems as the city.

During his campaign, Gerczak said he would use intelligence to locate problem areas and then use “rapid deployment” of deputies to clean up the areas.

Cecil hasn’t forgotten Sept. 11 attacks

Several events are planned in Cecil County on Saturday to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Upper Chesapeake Community Band will honor Cecil County’s emergency responders with a 6 p.m. concert, “Remembering 9/11,” at Hart’s Church Amphitheater in Elk Neck.

The concert will include patriotic songs and well-known classical arrangements from John Philip Sousa to Rodgers and Hammerstein. It also will feature a special tribute to all county emergency responders, including firefighters, police agencies and emergency medical organizations and others.

A proclamation from the county commissioners will be read, said Hank Passi, one of the concert’s organizers.

This year’s event will be the fourth time the amphitheater has hosted a concert in remembrance of the attacks.

“It’s important that we don’t forget the sacrifices made that day,” Passi said. “This is the unofficial 9/11 remembrance concert of Cecil County.”

The 638-seat amphitheater, adjacent to Hart’s United Methodist Church, was barely a month old when the attacks occurred.

Ten days after the attacks, the Upper Chesapeake Community Band preformed a special “Healing of America” concert that drew more than 300 people.

The 16-year-old Upper Chesapeake Community Band is a volunteer community concert and marching band that plays a variety of music, including marches, show tunes, novelty pieces, patriotic numbers and classical favorites.

Members of the community band range from teenagers to senior citizens, all of whom are volunteers.

Admission to the Sept. 11 concert is free, but contributions will be accepted.

The Community Fire Company of Perryville also will hold a 9/11 remembrance ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday in the company firehouse. Participants and apparatus from all county fire companies have been invited to attend the event.

The ceremony will include a guest speaker, bagpipes, a band, and a color guard memorial. Light refreshments will be provided after the ceremony.

The North East United Methodist Church also will be hosting a special 9/11 memorial service starting at 7 p.m. That service is slated feature a survivor of the attacks as a special guest speaker, according to organizers.

Firefighters bow their heads during a Sept. 11, 2008ceremony at Perryville Fire Hall.

N.J. seeks suspension of doctor’s license in Elkton abortion

Dr. Steven Chase Brigham

Authorities in New Jersey are seeking to suspend or revoke the medical license of a doctor accused of ferrying patients to Maryland to complete late-term abortions.

Dr. Steven Brigham has already been cited for practicing medicine without a license in Maryland. On Wednesday, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office filed a complaint accusing him of illegally performing late-term abortions.

Brigham was not authorized to abort fetuses older than 14 weeks in New Jersey. Maryland law does not specifically restrict second-trimester abortions.

New Jersey authorities accuse Brigham of initiating abortions for three patients in Voorhees, N.J., then leading them in a caravan toElkton, where the procedures were concluded. Documents show another physician botched the abortion of one of those patients, forcing her to undergo emergency surgery.

Three weeks ago, physician Steven Brigham led a car caravan of patients from his Voorhees abortion clinic to his facility in Elkton, Md. After one of the patients was critically injured during her surgery there, Brigham put the semiconscious, bleeding woman into the back of a rented Chevrolet Malibu and drove her to a nearby hospital emergency room rather than call an ambulance.

Those details are contained in documents issued over the last 10 days by the Maryland Board of Physicians and Elkton police. The two agencies have launched a wide-ranging investigation into Brigham’s long-troubled abortion business, which he conducts in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

On Aug. 25, the Maryland Board of Physicians ordered Brigham, 54, to stop performing abortions in that state, where he has never been licensed to practice medicine. By then police had raided Brigham’s Elkton facility – from which they said they removed 35 “late-term fetuses and fetal parts” – as well as the Voorhees headquarters of his chain of 15 clinics, which does business as American Women’s Services.

Maryland authorities seek missing medical records, and are looking into Brigham’s habit of sending late-term patients across state lines after initiating their abortions in Voorhees.

Brigham’s four New Jersey clinics cannot provide abortions after the first trimester (14 weeks of pregnancy) because they do not meet state safety requirements for such risky outpatient surgeries. Brigham has for years performed the first phase of such abortions there – the insertion of absorbent rods that dilate the patient’s cervix over a day or more – and sent them to a facility in another state for the surgery. New Jersey law doesn’t address whether inserting dilators constitutes abortion.

Brigham did not return a phone message left Thursday at his Voorhees condominium.

Maryland’s action is just the latest problem for the doctor, whose medical license has been revoked, relinquished, or temporarily suspended in five states over the last 18 years.

In July, the Pennsylvania Department of Health revoked Brigham’s permission to own clinics in the state because he had repeatedly employed unlicensed caregivers; he is appealing that decision. Brigham himself cannot perform medical procedures in Pennsylvania because of a confidential 1992 agreement in which he agreed to give up his license.

Brigham also had $234,536 in federal tax liens against him in April for failing to pay payroll taxes from 2002 to 2006.

Maryland regulators are investigating not only Brigham, but also two physicians he employed, the documents show.

On Tuesday, the board suspended the Maryland license of George Shepard Jr., a Delaware obstetrician-gynecologist hired in 2009 as a part-time medical director of Brigham’s four Maryland clinics. The board has charged Shepard with unprofessional conduct and with helping Brigham flout credentialing requirements.

Shepard’s lawyer, Jason Allison of Elkton, said, “We are reviewing the allegations and . . . are confident that Dr. Shepard’s license will be reinstated.”

On Tuesday, the Maryland board also suspended the license it granted less than two months ago to Nicola I. Riley, a family physician who in late July began flying “from her home in Utah every other week to Maryland to perform abortions.” Riley did not return a call left with her mother in Utah.

It was Riley who mishandled the abortion on Aug. 13, according to the medical board documents. They provide this account:

On Aug. 12, an 18-year-old woman, 21 weeks pregnant, signed abortion consent forms at Brigham’s Voorhees facility, at 1 Alpha Ave. Brigham then inserted the absorbent rods that widen the cervix.

On Aug. 13, the patient returned to the Voorhees clinic, with “the understanding that she would be provided transportation to Philadelphia” for the surgical phase of the abortion.

Instead, “Dr. Brigham . . . instructed [her] and the other women who were scheduled to complete abortions to form a line of cars and follow the lead car to a location where the abortion would be performed.”

In Elkton, Riley gave the patient anesthesia under Brigham’s direction and began the surgery, but cut through the patient’s uterus into the bowel and vagina.

Riley informed the patient’s mother and boyfriend of the complications, but refused to call for an ambulance. Riley “originally contemplated taking [the patient] by wheelchair to the hospital, which was about two blocks away.”

Brigham drove Riley and the patient to the hospital, where the two abortion doctors dodged questions “about who they were, what had happened, and from where they had come.”

The patient’s injuries were so complex that she had to be flown by helicopter to Johns Hopkins Hospital while Riley “returned to the Elkton office . . . to perform another abortion.”

A few days later, the patient complained to the Elkton police; they raided the clinic on Aug. 17, looking for the patient’s medical record. Although that couldn’t be found, police discovered frozen aborted fetuses and medical-waste records showing fetal ages up to 36 weeks. (A pregnancy is considered full-term at 38 weeks.)

On Aug. 20, Elkton police searched Brigham’s Voorhees office for medical records that would explain the fetuses.

The officers “found only two medical records related to the fetuses,” board documents say.

Staff from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office were on hand for the search, spokesman Paul Loriquet said. He added that he believed New Jersey’s Board of Medicine, which oversees physicians, would take action soon.

The Maryland board moved against Brigham, Shepard, and Riley after a Johns Hopkins physician filed a complaint. The physician expressed concerns that patients were being put at risk by “being transported across state lines to complete medical care,” board documents say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ2EvILbUQk – WJZ reports

FATAL SHOOTING IN ELKTON

Saturday June 5 2010

De. Man made false 911 call to Elkton Police

A Delaware man who made a false 911 call early Saturday morning was fatally wounded after he exchanged gunfire with responding police officers.

The man is identified as Dwayne M. Williams, 30. He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

The two Elkton Police Department officers involved in the shooting are not being identified by their department at this time. One is an 11-year police veteran with three years of service in Elkton. The other has been an officer for 16 years, including 14 with the Elkton Police Department. 

Elkton Police Chief William Ryan Sr. requested the police involved shooting be investigated by the Maryland State Police. Investigators from the State Police Homicide Unit responded and are conducting the investigation. A member of the Cecil County State’s Attorney’s Office also responded to the scene and has been briefed on the investigation. 

The preliminary investigation indicates that shortly after 12:00 a.m. Saturday, a 911 call was received in Cecil County from a male caller who said there was a man with a gun in the parking lot of the North Side Pharmacy, in the 700-block of North Bridge Street, in Elkton. He requested police respond to the scene.

Two Elkton Police Department officers responded. The first officer to arrive saw a pickup truck parked in the lot with a male occupant, later identified as Williams. Moments later, the second officer pulled into the lot and saw Williams holding a gun as he got out of his truck. The officer yelled a warning to the first officer at the scene, as both officers saw Williams raise his gun and point it at the first officer.  

In fear for their lives, both Elkton officers fired their department-issued Sig Sauer .45 caliber pistols. Williams fired his gun at the first officer. Williams was wounded and police immediately summoned emergency medical services personnel. Williams was determined to be deceased at the scene. Neither officer was struck by gunfire in the exchange. 

State Police investigators found a 9mm semi-automatic handgun beside Williams at the scene. They also found Williams’ cell phone at the scene and verified the call to 911 came from his phone. 

Maryland State Police investigators worked with police in Delaware to locate Williams’ parents, who were his closest relatives. During a search of Williams’s residence, where he lived alone, troopers found an apparent suicide note.

Williams’ body has been transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for an autopsy. At this time, police do not know the motive for his actions or what his connection to Elkton was. 

Both officers have been placed on routine administrative leave by Chief Ryan, which is procedure, pending the outcome of the investigation by State Police. The investigation is continuing.