Police Car

martinsburg@herald-mail.com MARTINSBURG, W.VA. - Former Martinsburg High School football standout Brandon Barrett was charged over the weekend with driving under the influence and possession of marijuana after police pulled his car over for erratic driving, court records state. Barrett, 19, of 111 Centre St., Martinsburg, was arraigned on the two misdemeanor charges and released on $5,000 bond. He asked that an attorney be appointed to represent him, records filed in Berkeley County Magistrate Court state.

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - A jury was taken into the parking lot of the Franklin County Courthouse on Wednesday to see a demonstration of a police cruiser's lights and siren, and afterward acquitted a Mercersburg, Pa., man on a charge of attempting to flee or elude police. The trial lasted two hours and the jury took just over an hour to find Joseph Tod Brown, 27, of 7975 Charlestown Road, innocent of the second-degree misdemeanor, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

A man who was charged after allegedly throwing a gun over a railing in the North Jonathan Street area in a suspected drug incident last month waived his preliminary hearing Wednesday in Washington County District Court, according to court records. The case against Leroy Benjamin Harris, 31, no fixed address, will be forwarded to Washington County Circuit Court, according to court records. Harris, who has been released from the Washington County Detention Center since the June 30 incident at 311 N. Jonathan St., was charged with possession of marijuana, possession of paraphernalia and handgun on person, according to court records.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A man put in the back seat of a police car because officers believed he was driving under the influence somehow got access to the officer's radio and called 911 operators, saying he needed help and was being beaten, according to court records. The incident happened around 2 a.m. Friday. David E. Churchill, 31, of Inwood, W.Va., was charged with driving under the influence, obstructing police, fleeing on foot, reporting a false emergency, speeding and driving left of center, all misdemeanors.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A Falling Waters man was shot to death in a mobile home park along W.Va. 45 east of Martinsburg Wednesday night. Police were investigating the death as a homicide, West Virginia State Police Sgt. George Bradshaw said early Thursday. Benjamin Leo Lowery, 32, died after being shot in the chest, Bradshaw said. Lowery was taken to City Hospital near Martinsburg, where he was pronounced dead around midnight, Bradshaw said. Police had another man in custody at the state police barracks along Edwin Miller Boulevard, Bradshaw said.

martinsburg@herald-mail.com Police charged state Sen. Herb Snyder, D-Jefferson, with first-offense driving under the influence and DUI over .10 after police allege he failed four field sobriety tests and registered a .267 on a breath test Thursday. The legal blood-alcohol limit in West Virginia is .10. "I take 100 percent responsibility for what I did," Snyder, 49, said Friday afternoon from his Shenandoah Junction home. "I apologize first to my family and secondly to all the people that I represent.

Week of Dec. 24, 1956 A newspaper man from far-off Iran, who accompanied a group of foreign teachers to Hagerstown earlier this month, and who visited The Herald-Mail newspaper plant, was so impressed with what he saw and heard that he's using this information on newspaper practices in an article he prepared for publication in one of the leading Iran newspapers. The population of Washington County passed the 85,000 mark for the first time during 1956. The population estimate for 1955 was 84,600.

By MARLO BARNHART Staff Writer Smithsburg Police Chief Tommy Bowers has fired his gun in the line of duty only twice in his 13 years of service with three police agencies. The second time came early Sunday when Bowers, 46, fired off eight rounds as he tried to avoid being struck by a suspect's car, he said. The driver of the car, Richard A. Sheffler, 29, of Waynesboro, Pa., was struck in the legs by one of the shots from Bowers' gun, Maryland State Police said. Sheffler, of the 300 block of West Sixth Street, has been charged with assaulting a police officer, driving while intoxicated, destruction of property - a police car - and numerous traffic violations, police said.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A woman driving a stolen West Virginia state police cruiser, with lights on and siren blaring, led police on a late-night, high-speed chase through three West Virginia counties and northern Virginia Thursday, ending after more than an hour when the car was forced from the road after it ran out of gas in Hampshire County, W.Va., police said. Police gave chase to the cruiser shortly after 9 p.m. when it was stolen by a woman in Berkeley County who had been placed in police custody after she was apprehended in West Virginia for allegedly stealing a separate car earlier that evening in Frederick County, Va., according to a Virginia state police officer who would not release his name.

Three sketches for skate park viewed WAYNESBORO, Pa. - Washington Township officials have received three sketches for a new skate park at Pine Hill Regional Recreation Area off Mentzer Gap Road. An anonymous donor contributed more than $100,000 to the skate park being designed by Artifex of California, according to published reports. Area youths already shared ideas for the park and will be invited back to review the sketches at a meeting tentatively scheduled for Thursday, June 21 at 7 p.m. The first design, at 52 feet by 80 feet, has a three-sided pyramid with kinked rail and stairs; bank ramp or quarter pipe; curved concrete ledge; and bowl/quarter pipe transitional obstacle.