St. Mary's County Times December 06, 2018 | Page 6
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The County Times
Local News
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Police Alerted to Escaped Fugitive Clements Property Declared a Nuisance
Cul Priest Lamont Jones
By Guy Leonard
Staff Writer
Maryland State Police are on the look-
out for an escaped fugitive from North
Carolina who has been on the lam since
mid-October.
Cul Priest Lamont Jones should be
considered armed and dangerous, said
Lt. Krystle Rossignol, commander of the
Leonardtown barrack, and should not be
approached.
“He stole a vehicle in Virginia and it was
found here in Callaway,” Rossignol told
The County Times. “By the time we got to
it, it had been in that location for six days.”
The vehicle was found at the Take It
Easy Campground on Piney Point Road.
“We did search the area but not much
was located,” Rossignol said. “We have not
seen him at all.”
Jones was first reported as escaping
from a Hoke County, North Carolina cor-
rections facility Oct. 14.
Described as an African-American
male, 45 years old, standing over six-
feet-tall and weighing about 180 pounds,
Jones was serving a lengthy sentence for
attempted murder stemming back to 1995.
In that case, according to media reports
at the time, Jones had also escaped from
a correctional facility while beginning to
serve his sentence for shooting a police of-
ficer in North Carolina when he was just
21.
Rossignol was not sure Jones was still
in the county but asked anyone who had
seen him or had contact with him to come
forward.
“This guy could be in the area,” she said.
“He could be out there.”
Rossignol said his apparent travels to St.
Mary’s County from Virginia appeared
strange, since there were other places he
could go that were less geographically
constricted.
“If someone has a tip we are following
up on that information,” Rossignol said.
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This home on Horse Shoe Road in Clements
has been declared a public nuisance for the
years of complaints of drug activity there.
By Guy Leonard
Staff Writer
A home in Clements that has long
been the focus of numerous drug in-
vestigations and warrant raids has been
declared a nuisance after the county at-
torney’s office successfully prosecuted a
case in District Court in November.
Several county law officers testified
that the home, 24550 Horse Shoe Road,
had been a nexus of drug activity, in-
cluding storage and sales, for several
years.
The ruling by Judge John Slade III
included barring four people who once
resided at the house from ever returning
and compels the owners of the home,
Juanita Chase and Francis and Carol
Price, to come up with a plan to ensure
the property will no longer be a nui-
sance to the public that must be submit-
ted to the court in 30 days from the time
of judgement.
If the owners do not comply, they
could be held in contempt, according to
information from the St. Mary’s Coun-
ty Sheriff’s Office, and the property
could eventually be sold under certain
conditions.
Attorney James Tanavage filed the
civil complaint on behalf of the county
and pursued it in court.
“We originally thought about go-
ing after it under the blight ordinance,”
Tanavage said. “We kind of stumbled on
the nuisance statute to be honest.”
Tanavage said the home had been
the subject of two successful warrant
searches for drugs and paraphernalia
already this year, with the latest being
in April.
That raid recovered a major haul of il-
legal narcotics, said Tanavage.
“There were [drug] calls going to that
house dating back to the 1980s,” Tanav-
age said of police testimony. “The evi-
dence was pretty overwhelming that the
house had been used to store and sell
drugs for the past seven or eight years,
at least.”
The people who had been living in the
house were family members of the own-
ers, said Tanavage.
Of the four people forbidden from re-
turning to the home, Tanavage said, two
were already in prison serving lengthy
sentences related to narcotics.
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Town Mulls Downtown
Improvement Recommendations
By Guy Leonard
Staff Writer
Consultants hired by the Town of
Leonardtown to make recommenda-
tions on how the downtown can be
better used to foster greater growth
and economic development have
made suggestions that seem to have
been well received.
The draft plan from Mahan Rykiel
Associates and Arnett Muldrow As-
sociates says the town has a strong
business presence in the town square
and its access to waterfront property
was also an asset in its favor, the re-
port stated.
However, the report stated the
town’s downtown has several impedi-
ments to making it truly pedestrian
friendly with limited lighting and
crosswalks for example.
The town square is also underuti-
lized, the consultants reported, and
small shrubs are overused that block
the signage of many storefronts.
The report goes deep into the mar-
ket forces that define the town’s fu-
ture but gives advice for improving
the core of Leonardtown in the im-
mediate future that should be easy to
achieve.
Town Administrator Laschelle
McKay said the plan had favorable
options for Leonardtown to pursue to
improve the downtown.
“The outlook for economic devel-
opment was very positive, but the re-
port gave us a lot of smaller things we
can do in the near term,” McKay said.
“I had a lot of positive feedback that
the plan had many achievable goals.”
One of those was installing signs
that gave visitors directions to spe-
cific parts of town to cut down on any
confusion, particularly in looking for
restaurants or other shops.
“We’ll likely get a committee to
sign off on the priorities we want and
then take them to the [town] council,”
McKay said.
The report said the town was par-
ticularly strong as a dining destina-
tion, which could continue to grow, as
well as independently owned stores
for retail shopping, home furnishings
and specialty food shops could be a
strong retail niche for the town.
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