One happy ending — sort of

You know you’re in for a stretch of weird, wretched crime and violence when the good news involves a deer getting hit by a car.

The Associated Press reports that Prince George’s County police are calling a convenience store owner in Fort Washington a hero for knocking the gun out of the hand of one of two would-be robbers last night and killing him with it. (The other guy ran away.)

Also last night, three men tried to rob a liquor store in Wilmington, Del. Two pulled guns on a clerk. The clerk shot one of them dead. (The others ran away.)

Monday night, according to the Associated Press, Charles County sheriff’s officers arrested a man for shooting and killing a man who tried to rob him of drugs and money outside of a bar in Indian Head. Eugene Abebe Jackson, 29, is charged with first-degree murder.

Convenience stores, liquor stores and bars — frequent sites of death.

The body of a woman with a severe head wound was found behind a convenience stores in Baltimore yesterday. Police are investigating.

The day before, according to AP and The Sun, a Baltimore shelter employee was arrested after a homeless man was stabbed during a fight over personal hygiene. The man wanted a bag of soap and toothpaste, but, according to police, the staff member said the man already had one. They argued. The homeless man ended up with a knife in his lower back. The employee is charged with attempted second-degree murder.

Sometimes the police investigate, but sometimes they are investigated. In Prince George’s County, the former police chief of Morningside was indicted Tuesday on five charges concerning a police department gun.

And a former PG County police officer was indicted Monday, accused of using his squad car to drive a robber to a bank in Temple Hills last June, sending away firefighters who responded to an alarm from inside the bank, and then pretending to try to capture the robber, who got away. 

Oh, about the deer that got hit by the car: It got stuck in the grille Saturday night in New Castle, Del., but somehow wasn’t injured. Police and the state SPCA tranquilized it and then removed. When it regained consciousness they watched it run off to safety.

Well, not exactly safety. As the woodland creature scurried away, someone took a shot at it. The bullet missed the deer and the police, who arrested a 31-year-old man for reckless endangering and other charges.