Accident Death

Merna, 70, and Everett Taft, 71, of Edina, Minn., went everywhere together. They were "snowbirds," moving to California for six months each winter to get away from the Minnesota cold and to be near their son, Brad, and his family. On Dec. 1, they celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary, Brad Taft said. Hand-in-hand, the energetic couple would take daily walks through the neighborhood surrounding Canyon Villas Senior Apartments in Canyon Country where they rented an apartment.

No one disputes that Alberto Sepulveda was doing exactly as he was told in the seconds after a police SWAT team burst into his family's home early on the morning of Sept. 13. As officers rounded up his father, mother and brother, the 11-year-old quickly complied with orders to lie face down, arms outstretched, on the floor beside his bed.

An 81-year-old Pasadena man was killed Monday morning on California 126 after his vehicle drifted off the road and smashed into a parked Caltrans steamroller. The man, whose identity was not released pending notification of his relatives, is the ninth person to die on the state highway in the past four weeks, officials said.

Drowsy drivers can be as lethal on the road as anyone who takes the wheel after drinking or breaks the speed limit. The issue of sleepy drivers has always taken a back seat to campaigns against drunk driving and concern over speeding. But safety advocates and lawmakers alarmed by the number of accidents caused by tired drivers say this issue is finally getting the attention it deserves.

A 16-year-old San Juan Capistrano youth apparently drowned Sunday while snorkeling and spearfishing with a friend near Seal Rock offshore of Crescent Bay, lifeguards said. The boy, Christopher William Cvengros, was found floating face down at 12:30 p.m., about a half-hour after his companion, who is also 16, reported him missing, said Kevin Snow, a Laguna Beach city lifeguard. Cvengros was an experienced diver and it was unclear what led to his death, Snow said.

Snow, sleet and rain spread across sections of the East on Sunday as a storm raced to the Atlantic from the middle of the nation, where Missouri got nearly 2 feet of snow. By afternoon, a band of snow, sleet and freezing rain arced from Arkansas and Missouri across the Ohio Valley into the mountains of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. About 23 inches of snow fell from Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning in southwestern Missouri's Barry County.

A female pedestrian was struck and killed by a Blue Line commuter train in South Los Angeles on Thursday morning, just 12 hours after a tow truck and another MTA train collided in the area. One man died and 17 were injured in that crash. The woman, whose name was being held pending notification of next of kin, was hit about 10:30 a.m. by a southbound train traveling about 25 mph as it was approaching the station near Vernon, said LAPD spokeswoman Carol Mitchell.

Homer Smith, who served three stints as a UCLA football assistant coach and may have been college's most intellectually gifted offensive mind, died Sunday in Tuscaloosa, Ala., after a long battle with cancer. He was 79. Smith, who spent 37 of his 39 coaching seasons at the collegiate level, never received the acclaim of the headliners he served — UCLA's Pepper Rodgers and Terry Donahue and Alabama's Gene Stallings. Smith was introverted and nomadic by nature, never spending enough time in one place to establish a school-specific legacy.

Two workers burned when a pipe burst at a nuclear plant in nearby Surry died Monday, bringing the accident's death toll to four, authorities said. Ronald E. Wilkes, 32, of Chesapeake and Clyde Wayne Matthews, 28, of Colonial Heights died at Norfolk General Hospital.

Ford Motor Co. is paying $6 million to settle a lawsuit that partially blamed the auto giant's failure to offer rear shoulder harness restraints for the traffic accident death of a child and crippling injuries to his surviving twin. The settlement is the largest paid in a case involving the lack of rear shoulder harnesses, San Diego attorney Craig McClellan said. He negotiated the settlement on behalf of the twins' parents, Jim and Patricia Miller, who also survived the Nov. 13, 1988, accident.