VIOLENCE ATTENDS A DRUG'S RISE

Just before dusk Wednesday evening, Jim Ross jumped out of his pickup truck
and walked hurriedly up to an old friend on Holly Lane in Waldorf. Smoking
a cigarette, he asked the friend to hang out that night.

"We'll get the 'Three Amigos' together again," Ross said, pointing to
another man waiting in the pickup truck.

But the friend, who spoke to a reporter on condition of anonymity, declined.

What happened next, authorities and drug experts say, is an extreme example
of the violence associated with a drug that is on the rise in Southern
Maryland: phencyclidine hydrochloride, or PCP.

The reluctant friend said Ross grabbed him by the throat and yelled, "You
think you're better than me. I'll kill you." The friend escaped, but Ross
then ran inside a house and stabbed another friend, Larry R. Matthews, 47,
several times with a switchblade, critically wounding him, according to the
Charles County sheriff's office.

Then Ross walked across Holly Lane to three strangers sitting and talking
on a porch and stabbed them, authorities said. Seriously injured were
Samuel Lewis, a 79-year-old Alzheimer's patient; his caretaker, Frances A.
Ford, 55; and George Williams, 53.

When sheriff's officers arrived at the scene, they found Ross beating Ford
over the head with a flower pot, according to court records. Ross ran at
the officers with a stick, but police were able to subdue him, said Capt.
Joseph C. Montminy.

James A. Ross Jr., 54, of Waldorf was charged with four counts of attempted
first-degree murder and four counts of first-degree assault. On Friday, a
judge ordered him held without bond.

According to witnesses and authorities, the cigarette Ross smoked before
the attacks was laced with PCP. And the violence that resulted is becoming
more prevalent as the drug comes to rural areas from Washington and Prince
George's County, authorities said.

"I just brought it up at a meeting last month -- we've had more cases of
PCP," said Detective Sgt. Randy Stephens of the Maryland State Police
barrack in La Plata. "And the cases we've had . . . have been violent cases."

No statistics were available on the drug's prevalence in Southern Maryland.
It still lags behind crack cocaine and marijuana, investigators said.

PCP users like the drug for its long, intense high -- up to six hours --
and because it is not physiologically addictive, said Vince Fighera,
director of treatment and clinical service at Jude House Inc., a
residential drug and alcohol treatment center in Bel Alton.

The drug was developed in the 1950s as a tranquilizer and is snorted,
smoked or eaten. It was popular in the Washington area in the 1970s and
'80s, but usage after that was on a decline until two or three years ago,
narcotics investigators said.

The drug causes intense hallucinations that its users will act on -- often
violently and with a high tolerance for pain, said Fighera.

During a stretch of eight hours last month, Stephens said, troopers in
Charles County had two unusual and dangerous encounters with suspects
allegedly on PCP.

On April 11 about 5:50 p.m., Jerome L. Silver II, who police said had been
smoking PCP, tried to punch a trooper who had pulled him over for allegedly
speeding. The trooper sprayed Silver, 27, with Mace but to no effect,
police said. Silver then punched an officer and a police dog before running
across a busy Route 301, police said. Silver shouted, "Kill me, kill me, I
want to die," when officers finally apprehended him, according to charging
documents in District Court.

Then, about 2:20 a.m. April 12, a driver who police said was smoking PCP
led two state troopers on a 90 mph chase north on Route 301, according to
court records. When Bryant A. West, 23, was arrested, troopers found crack
cocaine and a small jar of PCP, according to court records.

On May 7, state police in Leonardtown charged John L. Abell IV, 39, with
attempted kidnapping when, high on PCP, he tried to force a woman into his
van after asking her if she believed in God, Lt. Brian Cedar said. Later,
when police found him, he was drawing figures in the roadside gravel on
Route 243, Cedar said. While in custody, Abell shouted racial epithets at
black troopers and had to be restrained by several officers, Cedar said.

PCP can be purchased in Southern Maryland, but it is produced mostly in
Washington, said Lt. Scott Whitcraft of the Charles County sheriff's office
narcotics enforcement section.

The drug can cause brain damage, Fighera said, adding that habitual users
"stand out in a crowd." He tells patients to think of their brain as an
old-fashioned switchboard.

"If you take PCP . . . you are haphazardly rerouting the whole circuit
board," Fighera said. "When you're done, you'll be left with something you
like or something you don't like."