Officer

Several Washington County Board of Education members said Wednesday that a letter they received from Hagerstown's mayor and City Council regarding the city's pitch to have the school board's offices move downtown, didn't offer enough detail. “There's several things missing from the letter and things I thought I had made clear yesterday, and I thought my colleagues had as well, is that we need some real numbers,” school board member Donna Brightman said Wednesday. Hagerstown Mayor David S. Gysberts sat in on most of a Tuesday school board work session in which the board heard about an estimated $6.6 million in renovations needed for the former Allegheny Energy building in order for it to be suitable for school system offices.

Family members of Wayne Jones, who died March 13 from multiple gunshot wounds when five Martinsburg police officers tried to arrest him during an altercation, claimed at a news conference Wednesday that Jones was struck 15 times by police bullets. The incident is being investigated by West Virginia State Police. The results of an autopsy performed on Jones, 50, of Stephens City, Va., have not been released. “The case is still under investigation,” Berkeley County Prosecutor Pamela Games-Neely said Wednesday.

A Washington County Sheriff's Office officer hit a guardrail on Interstate 81 on Tuesday morning in an accident that might have been caused by icy conditions, officials said. Washington County Sheriff Douglas W. Mullendore said it appears Tim Atwell encountered black ice when his police car went into the guardrail. Atwell's vehicle sustained minor damage and Atwell was not hurt, according to Mullendore. The accident occurred about 7:30 a.m. at about the 10-mile marker on southbound I-81, a Washington County 911 supervisor said.

The state fire marshal's office was investigating the cause of a suspicious fire that destroyed a Jeep Saturday morning in Keedysville, Sharpsburg Fire Capt. Darryl Benner said. No one was injured in the fire, Benner said. Sharpsburg Volunteer Fire Co. was called to the fire on Dogstreet Road at 4:56 a.m. Saturday, Benner said. The Jeep, which has not been driven for a few weeks, was facing the front of a garage to the rear of 42 S. Main St., Benner said. The Jeep and garage belong to the owner of 42 S. Main St., which is at the corner of South Main Street and Dogstreet Road, he said.

Washington County Sheriff's Office deputies said Sunday night they were looking for a missing teenage boy. Ra'Quann Mitchell, 15, was dropped off at 826 George St. in Baltimore at about 8:10 a.m. Saturday for a home visitation, according to the sheriff's office. Mitchell was on home visitation from the Oak Hill House at 12806 Independence Road in Clear Spring, police said. When staff returned from he Oak Hill House, Mitchell was not at the Baltimore home and failed to return, police said.

At a time when the U.S. Postal Service is recommending cutting Saturday service, it is actually adding outlets for customers in the form of village post offices such as the one at May's Service Center at 8708 Sharpsburg Pike, where a grand opening ceremony was held Friday. May's Service Center is the 200th village post office to open since the USPS introduced the idea in 2011. “As our financial situation at the Postal Service has changed, it has become more and more important for us to find ways to be relevant in the communities we serve, and not just have our own brick-and-mortar solution,” said David Fields, the vice president of the service's Capitol Metro Area.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, Baltimore Division, are participating in a joint law enforcement operation. The ATF has established and leads task forces focused on tobacco diversion, firearms, armed narcotics trafficking, explosives incidents and arson investigation. Task forces provide a number of advantages for all participating agencies, including drawing on the expertise of federal, state, county and local law enforcement, which shares resources with all participating agencies and increases the investigative possibilities available to all parties involved.

The Washington County Sheriff's Office is asking for the public's help in finding an electric guitar that was stolen during a burglary that occurred in the Clear Spring area on Dec. 31. A guitar matching the stolen black Fender Squier Strat was sold to Washington Street Pawn Brokers and the shop sold the guitar to an unknown individual on Jan. 11, according to the sheriff's department. The sheriff's department would like to talk to the person who bought the guitar to determine if it is the instrument that was stolen in the burglary, the sheriff's office said.

A man accused of attempting to stab a police officer with a railroad spike in March 2012 pleaded not guilty Thursday by reason of insanity to one count of attempted malicious assault in Berkeley County Circuit Court. Douglas Charles Butler, 45, who was shot in the chest by a Martinsburg police officer during the altercation, was committed by 23rd Judicial Circuit Judge John C. Yoder to a psychiatric hospital in Weston, W.Va., for three years, according to Berkeley County Prosecuting Attorney Pamela Games-Neely.

Washington County Public Schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said rough estimates indicate that renovating the former Allegheny Energy headquarters would be much less expensive for taxpayers than demolishing downtown Hagerstown buildings and constructing new administrative offices and a parking deck. Wilcox said estimates for renovating the former utility building on Downsville Pike are around $6 million. Combined with the $5.5 million price in the purchase agreement the Board of Education approved on Feb. 19, that puts the estimated cost of buying and renovating the building at around $11.5 million.