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James Kimble, 20, of Joppa, was sentenced in November 2010 to 25 years in prison with all but 12 years suspended for a glass beer mug attack that blinded off-duty Baltimore police Detective Jermaine Cook in his left eye in Joppa.

Harford County sheriff's deputies responding to a 911 call in the early hours of May 6, 2010, found Cook, then 33, bleeding heavily from the face after the roadside confrontation. Police said Cook was driving home when he stopped at a stop sign and Kimble approached him.

Authorities said Kimble accused Cook of speeding past a group of people gathered nearby and struck him in the face with the mug before Cook could identify himself as an officer. Harford County police said Kimble could be heard on the recording of Cook's 911 call yelling racial slurs and threatening to hang him.

Cook needed emergency surgery and ultimately lost all vision in his left eye. Kimble's cousin, Albert Ray Glasscock, 27, was also charged after allegedly scuffling with deputies who responded to the scene.

A Harford County grand jury indicted Kimble on hate crime and first-degree assault charges, and he was held without bond. Then-Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called the attack "deeply troubling" and said early accounts suggested it was racially motivated. Some neighbors told reporters at the time that Kimble said Cook had nearly struck bystanders with his car and pulled a knife on him; investigators said no knife was recovered at the scene.

A jury convicted Kimble of first-degree assault that summer. No source reviewed for this account states how the separate hate crime count was resolved. Harford County Circuit Judge Stephen Waldron imposed the sentence, calling the attack "intolerable in our society." Prosecutor Daniel Ryden said Cook's injury was "nothing short of catastrophic" and that he would never work as a police officer again. Cook's wife compared the damage to his eye to "placing a grape in a bag, slicing it in half, and then smashing it flat." Kimble apologized to Cook before sentencing, saying he is "not that kind of person."