Soccer Dad

Here comes da judge

from the Baltimore Sun

When 80-year-old Thomas Ward, a former city councilman and retired Baltimore Circuit Court judge, heard someone hollering "Police! Police!" while he took a walk the other day near his home in Bolton Hill, he didn't flinch.

So what did he do?

"I know the people in that house," the judge said. "It wasn't his."

As the man - about 6 feet tall and burly, and much younger than Ward - began clambering over the 8-foot fence, Ward recalls running up to him and saying, "Come on, baby, you're all mine."

In Ward's recounting of the incident, which took place Friday afternoon, he was hoping the man would stay in the yard until the police got there. Instead, the man, who police believe had burglarized that house and at least two others, possibly with an accomplice, climbed the fence and dropped to the sidewalk next to the judge.

"He was a pretty good-sized guy," said Ward, who is about 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds. Only a year ago, he was battling Guillain-Barre syndrome, a debilitating disease of the nervous system.

"I went to grab him, but he slipped out of my grasp. He got past me and started across the street. I was hot behind him and grabbed his collar with both hands, and I jerked him backward."

Nice catch judge.

crime, baltimore.