Baltimore officer who fatally shot fellow cop receives death threat

The Baltimore City police officer who fatally shot a 65-year-old fellow officer, received a death threat after the shooting, prompting police to add a security detail to the officer’s house.

John Torres, the policeman who shot and killed Officer Norman Stamp while trying to break up a fight outside a Southeast Baltimore strip bar April 24, received at least one phone call threatening his life after Stamp’s funeral, a source familiar with the case said.

Paul Blair, the city police union president, confirmed the threat, saying it warranted temporarily assigning an officer to watch Torres’ house for several days. - Stephen Janis

Inmate spoke of killing two months before prison bus strangling

A forensic psychiatrist testified for the defense Thursday that a Maryland prison inmate accused of strangling another aboard a prison bus had told him two months earlier that his demons would make him kill unless he got psychiatric treatment.

Dr. Neil Blumberg said Kevin Johns, who had by then been convicted of one murder and was facing trial for another, “was absolutely convinced that if he didn’t get help that he was going to do the same thing again. And I absolutely believed him.”

Blumberg, testifying on the seventh day of the capital murder trial, was the last of five psychiatrists or psychologists called on Johns’ behalf at the trial in Harford Circuit Court in Bel Air before Judge Emory Plitt Jr.

The defense rested Thursday afternoon after Johns declined to testify.

The trial will resume Tuesday.

Johns has pleaded innocent and not criminally responsible by reason of insanity to the charge of first-degree murder in the Feb. 2, 2005, slaying of Philip Parker Jr., 20.

Blumberg said that in his opinion, Johns was not criminally responsible for Parker’s death because he “lacked a substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.” - AP