Donnie Andrews

Larry Donnell "Donnie" Andrews (April 29, 1954 – December 13, 2012) was an American criminal and anti-crime advocate. He is best known for being the inspiration for the character Omar Little on the HBO series The Wire.

Early life

Andrews grew up in a housing project in West Baltimore, Maryland. He was physically abused by his mother. At the age of nine, he witnessed a man being beaten to death over 15 cents (equivalent to $1.16 in 2016).

Life of crime

Andrews became a stickup artist who robbed drug dealers, but his code of ethics included never involving women or children. He was known to police for armed robbery and drug dealing in the 1970s and early 1980s in Baltimore. In 1986, local drug kingpin Warren Boardley convinced Andrews (who needed to support his heroin addiction) and Reggie Gross to take on the contract killing of Zachary Roach and Rodney "Touche" Young. Filled with guilt, Andrews surrendered himself to Ed Burns, a homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department. Working with Burns, he agreed to wear a covert listening device, which he used to implicate Boardley and Gross in the killings.

Donnie

Donnie may refer to:

People

A familiar form of Donald, including:

Donnie (dog)

Donnie is a Doberman Pinscher dog who came to the attention of science due to his penchant for arranging his plush toys in geometric forms. His owner rescued him from an animal shelter, and at first he was slow to learn, and very reluctant to interact socially with her.

Behavior

He has appeared on the National Geographic Channel’s Dog Genius show. On the show, he is shown arranging some of his 80 plush toys into evenly spaced triangles and lines, and chooses to use, for example, only stuffed frogs or monkeys for a particular design. He is shown creating his arrangements in his large yard in Maryland on remote video cameras without humans being present.

He is even said to create social vignettes with the toys. For example, the day after he first allowed his owner to put her arm around him, he placed a large bear with its arm around a smaller frog. Dr. Barbara Smuts, a professor of psychology and specialist in animal behavior at the University of Michigan who studied Donnie and captured his activities on video, suggests that these behaviors may be linked to self-entertainment, or to past experiences such as his time spent in a shelter for a year with only a single toy. In her view, there have not been enough examples of behavior like Donnie's, to decide scientifically what they may mean.

Donnie Klang

Donald Joseph Klang (born January 23, 1985), better known as Donnie Klang, is an American singer, songwriter, producer and model. He won Making the Band 4 and was awarded his own solo contract by Diddy. He released his debut album, Just a Rolling Stone in late 2008.

Life and career

Klang was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began modeling as a baby and doing television and film work from a young age, getting minor roles on NYPD Blue to The Nanny. He was in a band in middle school, later attending chorus in high school. He was part of pop groups in St. Dominic High School and Island Trees High School, namely Playa Deception and INT. The latter which released an independent record called Hip-Pop. He attended Hofstra University briefly studying music management and business and minoring in music. Klang decided to take a semester off of college to pursue a music career with his group.

Klang had been in INT for nine years before it broke up because their parents wanted them to go back to school as the band was going nowhere. He auditioned for American Idol twice but never got past the first round. These events led to him being apprehensive of pursuing music further. Not long after returning to Hofstra and working at a warehouse, the opportunity came for Making the Band 4 and he again took time off from college in 2007. An acquaintance had entered his MySpace account into an audition which he later attended at the encouragement of his family. He was awarded his own solo contract by Diddy instead of a spot in the group. Klang released his debut album, Just a Rolling Stone, in late 2008 which peaked at number nineteen on the Billboard 200. He later opened for Janet Jackson in the fall.