Barnes was charged in September in Montgomery County District Court after he allegedly flooded a Silver Spring baseball field over the summer with Montgomery County Fire Capt. Christopher Reilly. Both were charged with malicious destruction of property and disorderly conduct.

Reilly was acquitted Friday; charges against Barnes were dropped the same day.

“[Barnes] probably should’ve never been charged in the first place,” said Richard A. Finci, a lawyer who represents Barnes. “This whole thing has been blown out of proportion.”

Barnes was reinstated at the Reese & Community Volunteer Fire Company, but remains on nonpublic-contact status at the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service while it conducts an internal investigation, Peter Piringer, the public information officer in Montgomery, told the Carroll County Times.

There is no particular time frame for the Montgomery internal investigation, Piringer said.

Finci said the charges were dropped after he presented evidence to the State’s Attorney’s Office that proved Barnes wasn’t present when the field was getting flooded.

A complaint filed to police says Reilly and Barnes “deliberately and maliciously sprayed” water onto the outfield at Blair Baseball Stadium around 5:35 p.m. July 17. Reilly told police his actions were out of “frustration” due to baseballs repeatedly hitting vehicles parked at the fire station, according to charging documents.

Video provided to police showed Barnes parking the fire truck, removing the hose and hooking it up to a fire hydrant, according to the charging documents. Reilly then activated the water hose and aimed it at the field for about three minutes.

Finci said Barnes was following his captain’s orders before receiving a call and going inside the station. He came back to find Reilly spraying the field, Finci said.

The fire station is behind the left field fence of the stadium, where the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts of the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League play. The team was scheduled to play a 7 p.m. game, but it was canceled due to the flooded field.

In the charging documents, Thunderbolts founder Richard O’Connor told police: “We lost substantial income due to the cancellation of the game and the disruption to our end-of-season league schedule.” Fans were refunded for the canceled game.

O’Connor declined to comment while the litigation was pending and could not be reached about the dropped charges and acquittal.

Since it is a “smaller baseball field,” the college players were “bashing home runs” during batting practice, Finci said. There had been pleas in the past for raised nets after balls repeatedly hit fire department property.

During Reilly’s trial, it was revealed that rain from the previous night had threatened the game before the flooding, Finci said.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

Guilford Park is the county’s 13th high school and opened its doors to students in August 2023. The total construction costs were $129 million.

Howard Schools had contracted with Grounded Electrical Construction, LLC, to do electrical work on the Jessup school, after the company offered the lowest cost estimate, at $13.9 million. The company signed a “firm fixed-price contract” in April 2020, meaning the cost could not be adjusted as the project went on.

But Grounded Electrical claims the COVID-19 pandemic increased costs by nearly $5.5 million, and sued the school system last year for breach of contract. The company said it formally asked the board to change the price, which the board turned down. The company filed the lawsuit in February 2024, saying that the school board should have selected a contract that provided more flexibility in the event of special conditions, such as a pandemic, according to the complaint.

Howard County Public Schools said in a statement that it can’t comment on pending litigation, but that “it is common practice among school systems to use a firm fixed-price contract, and HCPSS uses them for all school construction.”

This appears to be the only breach-of-contract case Howard County’s Board of Education has been involved in post-pandemic. But it’s not the first time Grounded Electrical took a local school system to court.

In 2022, the company filed a complaint against the Anne Arundel County Board of Education after it denied the company’s bid to do work on Hillsmere Elementary School.

Attorneys for Grounded Electrical did not respond to requests for comment.

A judge was set to issue a ruling in the case in early November, but has delayed it. A letter was sent to the judge Oct. 10 about a settlement conference and Grounded Electrical’s failure to appear in court, according to online court records.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

Police said the crash occurred at 2:30 p.m., Friday, in the right lane of the highway, south of Hudson Road. A Peterbilt dump truck failed to slow down for traffic then struck the rear end of a Ford Edge, causing a chain reaction that hit three more cars, police said.

The driver of the Ford, Charlene Broccolo, 62, and the passenger, Albert Broccolo, 64, were pronounced dead at the scene. Three others involved in the crash were taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

The highway was closed for about five hours during the crash investigation.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

Hyman says his law clerk conducted the research using databases that relied on artificial intelligence (AI), and that he himself didn’t understand the technology. Hyman told judges, who grilled him for eight minutes: “I did not know artificial intelligence was used by my firm or even really what artificial intelligence did.”

He said he has never used generative AI for professional purposes and thought it was basically “super Google.”

Maryland Appellate Court Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff ultimately referred Hyman to the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission on Oct. 29.

It’s the latest local example of a lawyer getting in hot water for using AI-generated citations. In May, Matthew Reeves, an attorney with Butler Snow who was defending the state of Maryland in a lawsuit over health care at Maryland-run jails, withdrew from the case after citing fake case law that had been “hallucinated” by ChatGPT.

Hyman’s brief contained 11 problematic legal citations, according to the ruling, including four nonexistent cases, five unsupported cases and two incorrectly cited cases.

The clerk who prepared the brief had worked for the firm for four years and “was not aware that these sites were controlled by AI, or that the search results produced by these sites were the product of AI,” according to her affidavit. She said she thought AI tools “essentially operate as a data or information aggregator that allowed for more in-depth and extensive research results.”

According to court documents Hyman and his law clerk had previously participated in educational courses about the ethical use of AI, and implemented an AI use policy.

While cases with “hallucinated” AI citations have popped up nationwide, this is the first time the appellate court has addressed the issue, according to the opinion.

Although Hyman accepted responsibility for the errors “because I submitted this under my name,” the judge mentioned that “it would be a stretch to say that he was remorseful for his failures.”

Robert Rubinson, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said competence is central to the issue. If a lawyer doesn’t check briefs and ensure arguments are correct, they are “not providing competent representation,” he said.

Since Hyman did not read the legal authority cited in his pleading, he “does not satisfy the requirement of competent representation,” Graeff wrote in the opinion. “An attorney cannot escape responsibility for problems caused by an employee.”

Michael Frisch, ethics counsel and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said anytime an attorney files a pleading or makes an argument, they are “absolutely responsible for its content.”

“When your name goes on a document, your reputation is going on a document,” he said.

While the use of AI isn’t unethical, it can be unreliable and can create facts that either don’t exist or are misrepresented. The opinion states that some AI models will “hallucinate” cases 30-50% of the time.

As generative AI proliferates, so do cases of its misuse among the law profession. Frisch said instances of “hallucinated” citations date back two to three years. Thus far, sanctions have been limited to financial penalties or thrown-out pleadings, but the sanctions “seem to be getting more aggravated or more severe,” he said.

Graeff called her ruling “a warning to others,” pointing out that Hyman’s actions can “hurt the client’s case” and diverted “judicial resources from other pressing work.”

Hyman admitted during oral arguments he was “mortified” by the feeling he was “detracting from my client’s case.”

Michael Lissner, executive director of Free Law Project, which is behind the CourtListener search engine used by Hyman’s law clerk, told The Baltimore Sun that there are ways to safeguard attorneys and others from AI hallucinations, such as having courts make their own universal list of valid citations.

“Courts bop attorneys and self-represented litigants over the head every week or two in a never-ending game of AI Whak-a-Mole,” Lissner wrote. “This is a solvable problem, but few are looking at the root cause, and so far we are mainly leaning on punitive solutions like punishing litigants instead of proactive solutions like making good legal information available to all.”

Frisch, meanwhile, said that these types of cases are likely to occur because lawyers often face a deadline.

“It doesn’t shock me that lawyers are using AI,” he said. “What shocks me is they’re citing cases they’ve never even tried to read or research, and that’s where the danger lies.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

Brian Shaw, 35, allegedly had at least eight photos and videos of child pornography on Snapchat, according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

The conditions of Shaw’s supervised release from his first federal case stated that he should have no contact with individuals under the age of 18 and could not congregate near parks, unless approved by a probation officer, according to the 2014 judgment.

Investigators said they observed Shaw giving tennis lessons to a minor on Oct. 29 at Centennial Park West, violating the conditions of his release.

In the 2014 case, Shaw pleaded guilty to distribution and possession of child porn. According to a 2015 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Shaw was in possession of 5,860 images and 562 videos of children engaged in sexually explicit content in that case.

Following his plea, Shaw was sentenced to seven years in federal prison with a lifetime of supervised release, in July 2014. He was also placed on the sex offender registry.

The affidavit in Shaw’s most recent case was filed Oct. 31, and the case was filed in federal district court Monday.

Shaw’s attorney would not comment on the pending litigation.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

The investigation ran for several months and ultimately led to the arrests of Fountain, Macaluso and seven others who had traveled to or planned to travel to Harford County in order to “sexually exploit and victimize children,” according to a video released by Sheriff Jeff Gahler on social media.

Investigators posed as boys and girls to communicate with the alleged predators. In the cases of Fountain and Macaluso, the investigator pretended to be a 14-year-old boy named Nate, who was looking for advice on “coming out to his parents” on the forum-based website Reddit, according to charging documents.

Fountain, 38, conversed with “Nate” for several days and asked him intimate and sexual questions, according to charging documents. Fountain said he was “into younger guys and having sex with them” in the texts and sent a sexually explicit photo to “Nate,” according to charging documents.

Fountain served on Skippack Township’s Board of Supervisors and owned two day care centers in Pennsylvania, Gahler said. An arrest warrant was issued Sept. 24, and he has since resigned from the board.

Macaluso, 37, made contact with the undercover cop posing as Nate on Reddit on July 24 before moving the conversation to text, according to charging documents. Macaluso asked “Nate” intimate and sexual questions and sent him multiple inappropriate photos, according to charging documents.

Some of the photos appeared to be taken at his office with the City of Suffolk, where he served as an assistant city attorney, according to charging documents.

Police confronted Macaluso at his office in Suffolk, where he was found looking for more underage victims on his computer, Gahler said.

Craig M. Kadish, who represents Macaluso, would not comment on the case’s specifics.

“Mr. Macaluso, like every citizen accused of a crime, is cloaked in the presumption of innocence unless proven otherwise in a court of law,” Kadish wrote. “We are still in the early stages of this case and have not yet received complete discovery.”

Seven others were arrested in the sting, including a 72-year-old man and another who joked he “doesn’t want to see Chris Hansen … waiting for him,” Gahler said.

The Harford Sheriff’s Office announced its collaboration with Hansen, who is known for his television show “To Catch a Predator,” in early October. This collaboration will appear on Hansen’s new show “Takedown with Chris Hansen,” which is available on Hansen’s streaming platform TruBlu. The episodes will stream this winter.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

The parents of Michael Robertson, 16, and Blake McCray, 15, filed the suit Oct. 30 and are seeking monetary compensation from Towson-based Advantage Sentencing Alternative Programs Inc. (ASAP) because the company failed to report the alleged shooter’s violation of home detention in the week before the Feb. 22 killings.

The lawsuit, filed by the Law Office of David Ellin in Reisterstown, also names Margaret Nyorkor, the alleged shooter’s mother, in the lawsuit.

“This was not an accident. It was preventable,” said Marshay Eaddy, the mother of McCray, in a written statement provided by her lawyer. “Me, my son and my community were innocent victims of their carelessness. We were failed by a system that was supposed to keep us safe.”

The alleged shooter, Emmetson Zeah, 18, was on home detention and wearing an ankle monitor as he awaited trial on an attempted murder charge from November 2024. Zeah repeatedly broke the terms of his home detention, and ASAP, the company in charge of his monitoring, failed its legal responsibility to report the violations to authorities within 24 hours, the suit alleges.

ASAP has since surrendered its license as a Private Home Detention Monitoring Agency in Maryland, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesperson Keith Martucci.

ASAP did not respond to requests for comment.

Zeah first violated the home detention Feb. 13. He broke it at least four more times, including Feb. 14, when he allegedly fired shots in the 10200 block of Twin Rivers Road in Columbia, according to a post by Howard County Police.

ASAP is required by an October 2024 law to report any breaks from home detention to the courts and police within 24 hours, according to the suit.

ASAP did not report any of these violations until Feb. 21, according to the suit.

On Feb. 22, Robertson and McCray were shot and killed outside the mall at about 5:50 p.m.

If the mandatory reporting had occurred, Zeah would have been in jail and the February shooting would never have occurred, said David Ellin, one of the attorneys representing the parents.

Despite at least five previous run-ins with the law, Zeah was granted home detention after his mother vouched for him at his bail review. The terms of his home detention stated that he was allowed travel only to school, work or medical appointments until his trial.

The defendant’s mother is also named in the suit for driving Zeah to the mall on the day of the shooting.

“Not only did she not prevent him from leaving, she actually facilitated it and drove him to the mall, where he then committed these heinous acts,” Ellin said. “We do want to send some message that, ‘Look parents, you do have responsibility for your children.'”

In 2023, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services audited ASAP and found multiple infractions, which led to a monitoring period, according to the suit. Following a complaint by the Maryland Judiciary in March and a license suspension by DPSCS in June, ASAP dropped its appeal and surrendered its license as a Private Home Detention Monitoring Agency in the State of Maryland.

Zeah was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison, with all but seven years suspended for the November 2024 attempted stabbing.

A jury trial in the killings of Robertson and McCray is set to begin on Jan. 26 in Howard County Circuit Court.

“Everyone keeps moving on like it’s just another sad story. But this is my story. This is my son. This is our pain,” Eaddy said in the statement. “Something has to change. Someone has to be held accountable. Because if this can happen to Blake and Michael, it can happen to anyone.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

DiAngelo Smith, 34, is scheduled to stand trial next May and faces two counts each of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, firearm use in the commission of a violent crime, and other weapons-related offenses.

A plea of “not criminally responsible” — Maryland’s version of the insanity defense — claims the defendant was not able to appreciate the criminality or act according to the law at the time of the crime due to a mental disorder.

If found not criminally responsible, defendants are placed in a state-associated health care facility until deemed no longer a danger to himself or others, avoiding prison time.

After pleading not criminally responsible in April, Smith was found competent to stand trial during a September hearing on the basis of a mental examination. Competency, which is separate from criminal responsibility, relates to the defendant’s ability to understand the court proceedings at the time of the trial.

The killings occurred Feb. 24 in Columbia around 3:07 a.m.

Jack, 78, and Barbara Stokes, 65, Smith’s grandparents, were pronounced dead at the scene from gunshot wounds to their heads, according to charging documents.

Howard County Police found Smith, who also lived at the house, sitting in his car and displaying a handgun when they approached the scene. They eventually pulled Smith from the vehicle and arrested him just before 4 a.m., according to charging documents.

Smith entered two pleas: not guilty and not criminally responsible. This allows him to legally maintain his innocence. If found guilty, the court determines whether he is criminally responsible.

An attorney listed for Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

Zeah, 18, of Columbia, faced seven charges related to the November 2024 incident when police say he attempted to stab a person during a home invasion.

Following a two-day trial in Howard County Circuit Court in August, Zeah was acquitted on all but two charges: home invasion and first-degree assault. A judge sentenced him Thursday to 20 years in prison, with all but seven years suspended.

Zeah made headlines earlier this year when he was charged with the shooting deaths of Michael Robertson, 16, and Blake McCray, 15, outside the Mall in Columbia on Feb. 22. His trial in that case is set to begin in January.

The home invasion and assault charges stem from Nov. 28, 2024 — the day before Zeah turned 18. According to police, Zeah and another person went to the juvenile victim’s home wearing all black and attempted to slash and stab at him with knives.. The victim managed to escape unhurt.

According to the police report, the victim had obtained a video of Zeah being assaulted and posted it on Instagram in March 2024, prompting the November assault.

After the verdict in August, prosecutors sought 20 years of active incarceration, while the defense asked for a sentence of 18 months.

Zeah’s next court date is Jan. 26, when he will face charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in connection with the February shooting deaths of two teens in the bus loop area in the 10300 block of Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia.

Baltimore Sun reporters Kate Cimini and Glynis Kazanjian contributed to this article.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

On Oct. 25, three masked men with sunglasses were recording people outside the post office on North Juniata Street for several hours. Havre de Grace Police Chief Jonathan Krass said there were numerous calls to police about the men.

“It puts people on edge a little bit,” Krass said. “[The men] want to make sure the government does not infringe upon their First Amendment right to be in public and to film.”

These “First Amendment auditors” record people in public spaces to ensure their freedom of speech isn’t encroached upon. Often, they are also trying to get a reaction out of people for content online — such as in the case of the men at the post office, who posted a cut-up version of the encounters on their YouTube page “Public Rights Patrol MD.”

The owner of the page wrote to The Aegis that he is doing it “to show others that a camera isn’t your enemy and unless you’re committing a crime, or doing something you shouldn’t, you really shouldn’t care about being recorded.”

“If we don’t use them, we lose them,” he wrote, in relation to his First Amendment rights.

Krass said encounters with these men are nothing new for public employees, who have dealt with them in the past.

In the video, some people questioned the auditors, while others flipped them off or called them “idiots.” Many pulled out their own phones and started filming the auditors. In one heated confrontation, a man said, “All you’re doing is making people uncomfortable.”

Thomas J. Maronick Jr., a local defense attorney with no involvement in the situation, said the “expectation of privacy” is central to the situation’s legality.

Since the auditor is not surreptitiously recording these people, and there is no expectation of privacy in front of the post office, he is within his rights, Maronick said.

The same auditor was seen Monday at the Havre de Grace Library. A woman who asked to be anonymous due to safety concerns, told The Aegis her teenage daughter was followed around and recorded by the man.

The daughter and her friends were at the library when they realized the man was recording them. The man refused to give identifying information and told the teens he was exercising his First Amendment right. When the girls went into the library’s teen room, he kept recording them. The daughter told The Aegis it made her “uncomfortable” and “scared.”

“I realized we live in a society with no expectation of privacy, but when it comes to children and children’s spaces, there are different rules,” the mother said. “You shouldn’t live in fear in your own town.”

The owner of Public Rights Patrol MD wrote to The Aegis that the girls were “making open threats and lashing out” at him, and that he kept recording for his own protection. He wrote that he never records children and excludes them from his videos, and added there won’t be a video posted from the encounter.

Krass said police have an open investigation on an incident at the library but would not comment further.

The mother said she is considering filing charges on the grounds of harassment.

Maronick said these situations can veer into harassment if a person persistently puts a camera in front of someone and continues to ask questions after they decline to be on camera. In relation to the library situation, Maronick said it could be argued there is an expectation of privacy.

A spokesperson with the city of Havre de Grace wrote that the city “supports the lawful exercise of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.”

The auditor wrote that people who are upset “shouldn’t go outside.”

“If you don’t [want to] be recorded, you should do [what] I do and cover your face to conceal your identity,” he wrote.

Krass recommended that area residents stay calm, be patient and don’t pay attention to the auditors.

“It needs to stop,” the mother said. “Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.