Project planners presented the gas station concept to the city’s Board of Appeals at a contentious meeting Thursday, requesting that the project be granted approval for “conditional use” on the 33.32-acre property. Per city code, project planners must receive approval from the board before they are obligated to submit site plans outlining the project in detail.

Current information for the project states that a gas station and a 25+-room hotel are planned for the land, but no details on the number of gas pumps, number of hotel rooms, square footage, vehicle access, parking, traffic impact or other details have been made available for either of the proposals.

Mitch Ensor, with Bay State Land Services, told the board he had been working with the property since it was annexed into Havre de Grace about 10 years ago.

He explained that the land’s current zoning allows for a mix of commercial and residential development, and said a gas station is in line with the city’s comprehensive development plan.

Ensor also said every intersection in the county with a state road that intersects Interstate 95 — as Level Road does near the proposed development — has a gas station, which he said causes a need for the proposed gas station.

Residents of nearby housing developments attended the meeting and expressed concern with traffic, noise, quality of life, environmental concerns, overdevelopment and the impact the gas station would have on their home value. Many residents said that within a 5-mile radius, there are numerous gas stations and the proposal is unnecessary.

Some residents said developments in the area will add more residents and increase traffic: Bulle Rock plans to expand, and The Legacies is ready to break ground on 290 new homes off Level Road.

Speaking for himself and not as a City Council member, City Council President Jim Ringsaker emphasized that the property’s zoning allows for commercial development and said he fears not passing the conditional use could open the city to litigation.

He also criticized some of the project opponents, saying many did not live in city limits.

“While I don’t discount [what] everyone said, I understand if you live there, you don’t want stuff going in. But they don’t live in Havre de Grace,” Ringsaker said. “They are not within the city limits of Havre de Grace, and I think that diminishes the weight of the petition.”

Crowd members audibly sighed and snarked at the comment.

Acknowledging the concerns of the residents, Ensor said his review of the gas station found it would not have any impact on surrounding developments.

“I think the newly developing neighborhoods would be perfect users and convenient use of a gas station,” Ensor said, prompting audible laughs from the attending residents.

Despite the outline of a gas station and “over 25+-room hotel” being presented, board members said they do not have enough information regarding either of the developments to approve or deny the request for conditional use on the property.

After numerous back-and-forth conversations among board members, project planners and meeting attendees, it was determined that the project’s representatives are unsure of the development’s traffic impact as well as the scope of the gas station or hotel at this time because a tenant for either of the projects has yet to be identified.

Board members said numerous times that the project very well could be a one-pump gas station or something as big as a travel center.

The board voted to table its decision on the conditional use for the gas station and the hotel, citing a request for the project planners to present them with the project’s traffic conditions; planned facility usage; effect on local houses; protection of surrounding properties and conservation of property values.

Both projects will go before the city’s board of appeals at a later date. Project planners said that once a date is set for the next meeting, they will provide the requested information to the board.

Have a news tip? Contact Matt Hubbard at mhubbard@baltsun.com, 443-651-0101 or @mthubb on X.

They danced and mouthed along as coach Josh Wagener relayed the plan for what became the winning set to the team huddle. That energy carried over into the third set, players still dancing and singing to the melody as they waited for the opening serve. Their looseness came in handy when CMIT-North crawled back from a large deficit to take a late lead. A Wagener timeout reminded his players of the goal, and Patterson Mill pulled back ahead to complete its straight set victory, 25-20, 25-16, 25-22 and clinch a state championship appearance.

“It means the world to all of them to make it to that Saturday,” Wagener said. “That’s the first major goal. I know it means the world. Being so close for so many years, and most of them have been with the varsity for at least three years, just means so much for the whole program.”

This stage has been the ceiling for Patterson Mill in recent years. The Huskies have reached the state semifinal round four years in a row but lost in each of the last three. This year was different because of the senior class that experienced all of those heartbreaks.

“I’ve been with these girls for years, you know the buttons to hit,” Wagener said. “I just put it all in perspective. We’ve been here for four years in a row and came so close, and now we’re a couple points away. You just gotta push. I could see them getting tired and just didn’t want it to go to a fourth set.”

Their experience showed in Tuesday’s win. Patterson Mill controlled the first two sets with big early leads they maintained throughout and fended off a late CMIT-North surge in the final moments.

Patterson Mill will face Clear Spring, a three-set victor over South Carroll in the other 1A semifinal, in Saturday’s state title game at Harford Community College. Until then, practices will be kept light and fun, Wagener said. Just like how they play when it matters.

Bel Air falls to 17-time state champion

The Bobcats knew what they were up against.

Williamsport, the dominant Washington County squad, has controlled the Class 2A girls volleyball bracket for years. The defending state champions’ path back to the top this year took them through Bel Air, which lost in straight sets 25-20, 25-18, 25-22 to end its season Tuesday night in a Class 2A state semifinal on its home court.

“They were just a really good team,” senior right side Annalise Lewis said. “We could have executed better, but at the end of the day, we still played an amazing game. It was our own mistakes, little mistakes.”

Coach Dave Simon felt Tuesday was Bel Air’s first of two state championship games, the next coming Saturday if the Bobcats were to win. Instead, they couldn’t get past the semifinal round for the third time in seven years.

At the center of this year’s team was Lewis. Bel Air’s offense funneled through the imposing senior. “Every time she goes up, you can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen,” Simon said. She was a focal point again in the loss, leading comebacks that fell just short after Bel Air started each set in an early hole that proved too steep to climb out of.

“Just the people,” Lewis said when asked what she’ll remember most about the program. “You can’t get any better than this.”

“Annalise is a true leader,” Simon added. “She’s a great person, loves her teammates, does all the little things right, everything you’d want in a captain. She really ignites us and gets the fire started. And we want to keep it burning.”

Bel Air seems to reload every year, replacing county players of the year with ease to fuel its next deep postseason run. Last season, it was Anna Kane. This season was Lewis’ turn. There’s some underclassmen Simon has his eye on to take over in 2026. He’s confident his Bobcats will be back.

“We’ll kind of have to hit the reset button, to a degree,” Simon said. “We’re not starting from scratch. We’ll remain competitive.”

Have a news tip? Contact Taylor Lyons at tlyons@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/TaylorJLyons.

As many people do, Smith documented his life on Facebook. He posted videos steering a boat on the Chesapeake, vacationing and coaching football. During these activities, he reported on his overtime forms that he was working.

Smith was charged in September 2023 and hired as a long-term substitute by Harford County Public Schools in December 2024. Worse, Smith was then hired as a full-time educator this August. HCPS either failed to gather these easily accessible facts about Smith or ignored them entirely. Either way, that is unacceptable.

When hiring teachers to educate our children, HCPS should pay closer attention to who they choose to lead their classrooms. They should not be hiring rejects from other school systems, especially not those being prosecuted for defrauding the taxpayer out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. To ensure such an incompetent oversight can never happen again, HCPS must conduct a full review of its hiring process.

After pleading guilty to two felonies last month, Smith wasn’t fired. He was placed on administrative leave and is receiving his full salary. As Smith awaits his sentencing, we are left paying him for what could be several months. It feels obvious, but apparently it must be said: It is a waste of our tax dollars to pay someone who faces up to 25 years in prison.

The problem is more fundamental than just the fiscal irresponsibility of HCPS. This kind of poor decision-making is a breach in the trust that taxpayers and parents alike place in the school system to steward their money well and keep their children safe. We have a responsibility to protect our students and provide them with the best education possible. Currently, with hires like Smith, we are failing miserably.

Harford County is home to many great teachers and faculty who embody the values of honesty and integrity. Students look to their teachers as role models, and they deserve educators who can encourage them to have exemplary moral character through their HCPS journey and after graduation. HCPS should hire only the best and most qualified teachers.

To restore community trust in HCPS, the system must strengthen its hiring process and keep those with criminal records and charges out of the classroom.

Our students deserve better.

Liliana Norkaitis is a candidate for the Harford County Board of Education, District C.

There will be activities for children, a raffle for Ravens tickets and gift cards. Free lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

The event is open to all and gives guests the opportunity to speak with representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs for claims, healthcare and cemetery services. The Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families will also be there to discuss services the state’s DVMF has to offer.

Other local organizations will also be on site to help with employment, housing and other services.

For additional information, contact the commission at vetcommission@harfordcountymd.gov.

Harford County Cultural Arts Advisory Board awards grants

The Harford County Cultural Arts Advisory Board has awarded Community Arts Development Grants to 25 nonprofits for fiscal 2026.

The advisory board operates under the auspices of the Harford County Public Library Board of Library Trustees.

Community Arts Development Grants offer two types of funding: general operation support for nonprofit arts organizations in Harford County and arts programming funding for nonprofit organizations located in or serving the county.

Organizations receiving grants for general operating support are:

• Harford Ballet Company ($9,500)
• Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra ($9,000)
• Tidewater Players ($9,000)
• Harford Artists’ Association, Inc. ($8,500)
• Harmer’s Town Art Center, Inc. ($8,500)
• Harford Choral Society ($7,400)
• Maryland Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, Inc. ($6,600)
• Havre de Grace Arts Collective ($6,000)
• Scottfield Theatre Company ($6,000)
• Theatreworks Live, Inc. ($6,000)
• Burning Barriers Building Bridges Youth Theatre ($5,000)
• Deer Creek Chorale ($5,000)
• True North Project, Inc. ($4,500)
• Upper Chesapeake Chorus of Sweet Adelines International, Inc. ($3,700)
• River Stone Theatre Company ($2,600)
• Rogue Swan Theatre Company, Inc. ($2,500)

Recipients of grants for art programming funding are:

• Bel Air Recreation Committee ($9,000)
• Ladew Topiary Gardens ($8,300)
• Harford Community College ($8,000)
• Bach Concert Series ($6,150)
• The Liriodendron Foundation ($5,000)
• Friends of Jerusalem Mill ($3,600)
• The Vestry of Deer Creek Parish ($3,000)
• The Ed Lally Foundation ($2,500)
• The Historical Society of Harford County ($1,650)

The advisory board also provides Arts in Education Grants, which offer funding for arts experiences for Harford’s nonprofit schools, government facilities and community-based settings serving youth or other traditionally underserved populations. For more information or to apply, visit culturalartsboard.org/arts-in-education-grants.html.

Session on business planning with AI support offered

The Harford County Department of Economic Development is hosting the next session in their LevelUp series for small businesses called “Building a Business Plan with Smarter Strategies and AI Support.”

The free event will be held Thursday from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. at the CONVERGE Innovation Center, 1201 Technology Drive in Aberdeen.

The interactive workshop is curated for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to map out their vision, stay flexible as their business grows and use modern tools to plan and adapt easily.

Although the event is free, registration is required on EventBrite.com by searching “Building a Business Plan with Smarter Strategies and AI Support.”

Have a news tip? Contact Shaela Foster at sfoster@baltsun.com or 443-826-5894.

Juan Yahir Quiroz Manzueta, 21, of Yonkers, New York, is charged with attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and second-degree assault on a law enforcement officer. Police say Manzueta was driving a rental truck full of stolen used cooking oil Aug. 26 on Interstate 95, fleeing police, when he struck a police officer with the truck.

The officer, Lt. Robert Burgess, a 29-year member of Harford County Sheriff’s Office, was thrown nearly 40 yards after being hit and suffered critical injuries. He was airlifted to the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore but has since been released and is expected to make a full recovery.

Manzueta was extradited from New York to Harford County last week; he faces a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.

In his first hearing since extradition on Monday, Manzueta’s bond review took five matters into account. Aside from the three felonies he faces for injuring a Harford police officer, Manzueta’s charges include driving without a license in Anne Arundel County; two counts of theft and two counts of malicious destruction in Baltimore County; and driving on a suspended out of state license in both Prince George’s and Cecil counties.

The Harford County Public Defender’s Office requested that Manzueta continue to be held without bail. Prosecutors agreed and emphasized that Manzueta has been charged under different aliases for other charges in other states for offenses such as the theft of used cooking oil — something police recovered out of the Penske rental truck he used to flee police on Aug. 26.

Harford County District Court Judge Kerwin Miller deemed Manzueta a threat to public safety and ordered that he be held without bail.

Have a news tip? Contact Matt Hubbard at mhubbard@baltsun.com, 443-651-0101 or @mthubb on X. 

Police said the crash occurred at 2:30 p.m., Friday, in the right lane of the highway, south of Hudson Road. A Peterbilt dump truck failed to slow down for traffic then struck the rear end of a Ford Edge, causing a chain reaction that hit three more cars, police said.

The driver of the Ford, Charlene Broccolo, 62, and the passenger, Albert Broccolo, 64, were pronounced dead at the scene. Three others involved in the crash were taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

The highway was closed for about five hours during the crash investigation.

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

“Our investigation has concluded and the findings were referred to the [State’s Attorney’s Office] for review and final determination on possible charges,” Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Cristie Hopkins said Monday.

The Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office said it had received part of the Sheriff’s Office findings several days ago.

“The case is still under review with no status update at this time,” said Chief of Administration Caylin Ryden via email. “We are unable to provide a timeline as to when the review will conclude once the final reports are received.”

The Sheriff’s Office said it would release only “limited information” about the findings “if and when charges are filed.”

The crash happened on Route 543 in Bel Air, down the street from the high school and involved a school bus and two other vehicles. A preliminary investigation determined that one vehicle was heading north on Route 543 when it stopped to make a left turn. The vehicle was then struck from behind by another vehicle, which pushed it into the path of a school bus traveling south on Route 543, according to the sheriff’s office.

Elliott, 16, who was a soccer standout at her high school, was pronounced dead at the scene. She was in a car with Griffin, 17, who was released from the hospital about a week after the crash. Six others were also injured in the collision.

It was one of nearly 500 school bus crashes statewide this school year, two of them fatal. Aside from the Bel Air crash, an 11-year-old bicyclist died after colliding with a school bus last month in Montgomery County.

Have a news tip? Contact Bryna Zumer at bzumer@baltsun.com.

Hyman says his law clerk conducted the research using databases that relied on artificial intelligence (AI), and that he himself didn’t understand the technology. Hyman told judges, who grilled him for eight minutes: “I did not know artificial intelligence was used by my firm or even really what artificial intelligence did.”

He said he has never used generative AI for professional purposes and thought it was basically “super Google.”

Maryland Appellate Court Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff ultimately referred Hyman to the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission on Oct. 29.

It’s the latest local example of a lawyer getting in hot water for using AI-generated citations. In May, Matthew Reeves, an attorney with Butler Snow who was defending the state of Maryland in a lawsuit over health care at Maryland-run jails, withdrew from the case after citing fake case law that had been “hallucinated” by ChatGPT.

Hyman’s brief contained 11 problematic legal citations, according to the ruling, including four nonexistent cases, five unsupported cases and two incorrectly cited cases.

The clerk who prepared the brief had worked for the firm for four years and “was not aware that these sites were controlled by AI, or that the search results produced by these sites were the product of AI,” according to her affidavit. She said she thought AI tools “essentially operate as a data or information aggregator that allowed for more in-depth and extensive research results.”

According to court documents Hyman and his law clerk had previously participated in educational courses about the ethical use of AI, and implemented an AI use policy.

While cases with “hallucinated” AI citations have popped up nationwide, this is the first time the appellate court has addressed the issue, according to the opinion.

Although Hyman accepted responsibility for the errors “because I submitted this under my name,” the judge mentioned that “it would be a stretch to say that he was remorseful for his failures.”

Robert Rubinson, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said competence is central to the issue. If a lawyer doesn’t check briefs and ensure arguments are correct, they are “not providing competent representation,” he said.

Since Hyman did not read the legal authority cited in his pleading, he “does not satisfy the requirement of competent representation,” Graeff wrote in the opinion. “An attorney cannot escape responsibility for problems caused by an employee.”

Michael Frisch, ethics counsel and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law School, said anytime an attorney files a pleading or makes an argument, they are “absolutely responsible for its content.”

“When your name goes on a document, your reputation is going on a document,” he said.

While the use of AI isn’t unethical, it can be unreliable and can create facts that either don’t exist or are misrepresented. The opinion states that some AI models will “hallucinate” cases 30-50% of the time.

As generative AI proliferates, so do cases of its misuse among the law profession. Frisch said instances of “hallucinated” citations date back two to three years. Thus far, sanctions have been limited to financial penalties or thrown-out pleadings, but the sanctions “seem to be getting more aggravated or more severe,” he said.

Graeff called her ruling “a warning to others,” pointing out that Hyman’s actions can “hurt the client’s case” and diverted “judicial resources from other pressing work.”

Hyman admitted during oral arguments he was “mortified” by the feeling he was “detracting from my client’s case.”

Michael Lissner, executive director of Free Law Project, which is behind the CourtListener search engine used by Hyman’s law clerk, told The Baltimore Sun that there are ways to safeguard attorneys and others from AI hallucinations, such as having courts make their own universal list of valid citations.

“Courts bop attorneys and self-represented litigants over the head every week or two in a never-ending game of AI Whak-a-Mole,” Lissner wrote. “This is a solvable problem, but few are looking at the root cause, and so far we are mainly leaning on punitive solutions like punishing litigants instead of proactive solutions like making good legal information available to all.”

Frisch, meanwhile, said that these types of cases are likely to occur because lawyers often face a deadline.

“It doesn’t shock me that lawyers are using AI,” he said. “What shocks me is they’re citing cases they’ve never even tried to read or research, and that’s where the danger lies.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brendan Nordstrom at bnordstrom@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1353.

The Terps started the 2025 season with four straight wins with a true freshman quarterback under center, but they have since dropped five straight games, including a 55-10 loss to No. 2 Indiana during homecoming and a 35-20 defeat at Rutgers on Saturday.

As a result, coach Michael Locksley has drawn the ire of fans and even some boosters.

Should Locksley remain the Terps’ coach beyond this season? We want to hear from you. After you vote, leave a comment and we might use your take in The Baltimore Sun.

The Baltimore Sun reader poll is an unscientific survey in which website users volunteer their opinions on the subject of the poll.

To read the results of previous reader polls, click here.