Posted on 06/26/2012 10:34:06 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A 19-year-old man wanted in North Carolina in connection with the alleged armed robbery and murder of a teenager last month was arrested Tuesday morning at a welcome center off Interstate 95 in Laurel after his Baltimore-bound bus from Atlanta stopped there, Maryland State Police said.
Darius J. Smotherson, of Kannapolis, N.C., was arrested at the rest stop near Route 32 in Howard County without incident and is being held at the state police Waterloo Barrack, where Kannapolis Police Department detectives were expected to arrive Tuesday afternoon to begin interviewing him, police said.
Police will attempt to have Smotherson extradited to North Carolina during a hearing Wednesday morning, said Lt. Terry Spry, a Kannapolis Police Department spokesman.
Members of the Maryland State Police State Apprehension Team were alerted Monday by detectives at the Kannapolis Police Department that Smotherson was believed to be on a bus headed into the Baltimore area, police said.
Spry said police do not know why Baltimore was Smotherson's destination but that the investigation is ongoing.
Smotherson is charged with fatally shooting Daniel Cooper, 17, in the neck about 3:10 p.m. May 21 in the 400 block of Snow Street, in the Rowan County side of Kannapolis, which is just north of Charlotte, Spry said.
After being alerted to Smotherson's likely route north from Atlanta, which Kannapolis police learned through a Crime Stoppers tip, Maryland State Police investigators began conducting surveillance at locations in Baltimore and Laurel where the bus was likely to stop, police said.
About 7:30 a.m., members of the apprehension team doing surveillance at the Laurel stop spotted Smotherson exiting the bus with other passengers.
The bus, which investigators boarded to speak with the driver, was about 80 percent full of passengers, said Greg Shipley, a Maryland State Police spokesman.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Going to Baltimordor for what? To be with all the other crinimals?
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
OMG — can’t count the number of times I have stopped there over the past 50 years, visiting family between DC & Philly. Seems no place is safe any more.
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