… Isaiah Dixon worked as Baltimore County prosecutor and lawyer, now disbarred …

By Nick Madigan, The Baltimore Sun

9:14 PM EDT, April 10, 2011

Isaiah Dixon, a 55-year-old former Baltimore County prosecutor, is set to go on trial Monday on charges that he stole a car at knifepoint from two women outside a store in January 2010.

Dixon, who faces 18 counts, including armed carjacking, robbery, assault, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and drug possession, worked as an assistant state’s attorney for almost eight years, until July 1997. To avoid conflicts of interest, his case is being handled by a prosecutor from the Harford County state’s attorney’s office, Salvatore D. Fili, although it remains in Baltimore County Circuit Court under the supervision of Judge Timothy J. Martin.

It was not clear why Dixon left his job as a prosecutor. The defendant, who worked as an attorney in Towson before being disbarred by the Maryland Bar Association last year, already had a criminal record for drug use and possession at the time of his arrest in the carjacking case. Court records show arrests on drug charges and that he had failed to appear in court, for which he was held in contempt. In October 2009, he was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance, for which he was found guilty and given a suspended, one-year jail term. A similar charge in December 2008 was not prosecuted.

On Jan. 18, 2010, three days after the carjacking, Dixon was arrested after bailing out of a car and running from police officers on Belle Avenue in Northwest Baltimore. An officer had recognized the 2009 Honda Accord Dixon was driving as the same vehicle that had been taken from its owner, a 31-year-old woman, and her passenger outside a Shoppers Food & Pharmacy on Smith Avenue.

The car’s owner, Daryl Gabutan, told police that she “felt the point of the knife in her side” as she was approached by a man wearing a Ravens coat and a black bonnet, according to a court document. Gabutan then instructed her companion, Yvonne Alcuizar, to get out of the car. The document, based on interviews with the two women, said the man with the 6-inch knife “had a hard time putting the vehicle in drive.”

nick.madigan@baltsun.com