Joe Palazzolo, The Examiner
2007-02-23 08:00:00.0
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Howard County -

Robert Bell shifted in his seat Thursday as a Howard County Circuit Court judge rattled off his 20-year-old son’s sentence.

Three months for attempted robbery, plus probation.

Many parents would have blanched. But Bell, whose other son is serving a 15-year sentence for shooting a 4-year-old in the head, was matter-of-fact: “If you did it, you have to pay the consequences,” Bell said. “But things turned out all right. The boy was just running with the wrong crowd.”

Daron Bell was with that crowd April 10, when he participated in the assault and attempted robbery of Columbia resident Marcos Castillo.

Bell was the only one of the four assailants not wearing a mask, according to his attorney, Robin Ficker. He’s been socked away in the Howard County Detention Center since December.

Bell’s brother, Tion, 19, is serving his sentence at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown. He admitted in August to hitting toddler Fahad Islam with a stray bullet meant for a man who had called him a snitch.

“I’m the only one who hasn’t been in jail,” Robert Bell said. “I don’t know what I did to make them this way.”

Bell said he reared Tion and Daron alone from the time they were 9 and 10 years old.

Judge Lenore Gelfman, who also sentenced Tion, was unsympathetic.

She accused Daron Bell of fueling stereotypes, after reading aloud a portion of Castillo’s statement, in which he wrote he had found himself “acting prejudicial” since the attempted robbery.

Gelfman said, “It’s really very sad.”

jpalazzolo@baltimoreexaminer.com