Man charged with Finksburg store slaying

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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A Westminster man was arrested Sunday morning and charged with murdering a video store clerk, police said.

Michael Ryan Anderson, 26, killed Gary Hatfield, 54, a longtime clerk at H and D Movie Sales, which buys and sells adult and family videos, along Route 140 last weekend in Finksburg, police said. Anderson was charged with first- and second-degree murder, robbery and theft, police said Sunday.

He had been taken to the Maryland State Police’s Westminster barracks for questioning late Saturday night after dozens of state troopers staked out his small, third-story apartment on Winchester Avenue for hours.

Food wrappers and clothes were strewn about the floor inside, said Steve Black, Anderson’s only neighbor on the third floor, who said he stole a look into the apartment Sunday morning. Black’s door is only a few feet from Anderson’s. Black said he overheard police say the shower curtain was splattered with blood.

“He seemed like he was in a state of depression all the time,” Black said of Anderson. “He was very reclusive, kept to himself.” Anderson was so withdrawn, Black said, that even when his sister would come to give him a ride, he sometimes wouldn’t answer the door.

“She’d be pounding on the door and yelling, ‘You need to get up and do something,’ ” Black said. “He just never went out.”

Anderson has lived at the Winchester Hall apartment building for about eight months and his landlord said he never caused a problem. But there was something about him that wasn’t quite right, said Pat Humpert, the landlord. “He was almost depressed, the way he talked — very weird.”

Anderson walked nearly two miles to work the night shift at McDonald’s — often with long, untied shoelaces — because for about two months he had been without a car, Humpert said. His parents had paid his rent the past two months, she added, and also washed his clothes — although last week he borrowed a key to the complex’s laundry room.

Hatfield’s slaying was the first in Carroll County this year. One Carroll resident was slain in 2007.

Police have been searching for a man and a light-colored minivan seen in the shopping center the night of the killing. Black said Anderson used to drive a Ford Taurus.

Hatfield’s family found him after he failed to come home Jan. 26. Neighbors said Hatfield’s wife, Barbara, and son, Ryan, found him beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. About $1,000 was taken from the register, neighbors said, and while police have confirmed that it was a robbery and a murder, they have declined to give details.

Anderson was scheduled to appear before a court commissioner later Sunday.

msilvestri@baltimoreexaminer.com

SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

EMAIL STORY

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245 days ago: Wife of slain clerk: ‘There is no justice'

» 246 days ago: Man charged with Finksburg store slaying «

252 days ago: Homicide rocks Finksburg strip mall

253 days ago: Carroll video store manager slain in county’s first ’08 homicide