Accident Victims

A United Airlines jumbo jet with 393 people aboard hit massive air turbulence over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday night, killing one passenger and injuring dozens of others aboard. Passengers and serving carts were flung to the ceiling as the plane dived almost 1,000 feet when it flew into the turbulence at 33,000 feet. Officials at Narita airport near Tokyo said the incident happened just after passengers had finished eating a meal, two hours after the Boeing 747 left the airport at 9:05 p.m.

Intravenous fluids given to a trauma victim at an accident site may not be the best treatment and in many cases may actually be counterproductive, increasing the risk that a patient will die, researchers said Tuesday. Taking the time to insert an IV line may delay getting the patient to the hospital where treatment can be initiated and administering fluids may not be the most appropriate treatment, according to the study, published online in the Annals of Surgery ahead of publication in the February issue of the journal.

East Los Angeles College has established a memorial fund to assist the families of the three Huntington Park women--all students at the college--who were killed by a hit-and-run driver at a crosswalk in Bell. Meanwhile, the district attorney's office has charged Carlos Manuel Ruiz de la Ville, 31, with murder, felony hit-and-run and felony grand theft auto stemming from the May 11 incident. He also faces seven misdemeanor hit-and-run violations.

Even after midnight and despite a stiff breeze chilling the capital, Poles continued to pour into the streets as a nation in mourning showed no sign of letting up on its display of grief. Elderly women clutching icons of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, young couples with tulips and children carrying crayon drawings of remembrance streamed through Warsaw's squares. They placed their offerings at makeshift shrines to the victims of a plane crash that robbed their country of much of its elite.

In a region built around the automobile, the ritual of boys and young men racing their cars down highways and city streets was a problem long before 1950s hotrods fought for asphalt supremacy on Whittier Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and Pacific Coast Highway. But despite decades of trying, police are still struggling to fight the dangerous practice, which has been highlighted in the last year by a string of tragic collisions. Teenagers Pablo H.

A landslide rained boulders on visitors to one of Hawaii's most spectacular hiking spots, killing seven people--three of them from California--and injuring dozens, officials said Monday. Heat-seeking devices and military search dogs did not find any more bodies Monday beneath tons of rubble at Sacred Falls State Park on the island of Oahu. Rescuers had to dodge falling debris as they searched. "We're pretty much certain there are no more dead bodies under the landslide," said Honolulu Fire Capt.

As 150 rescue workers rushed to free a trapped construction worker, they struggled against one overwhelming irony: Art Garcia risked killing himself with every breath he took. Buried to his neck at the bottom of a 15-foot hole as a result of a construction accident Wednesday, Garcia was not seriously hurt in the initial collapse of earth that surrounded him.

Lauren Elder will never know why she survived the plane crash that killed two friends and stranded her on an icy Sierra mountaintop, wearing a lightweight skirt and vest and high-heeled boots. But she knows how she survived below-freezing temperatures when the plane crashed 30 years ago: by climbing down a 13,264-foot snow-covered mountain in spite of a broken arm, shattered teeth and a gashed and swollen leg.

A Dutch survivor of an ice avalanche that killed nine climbers atop the world's second-tallest mountain over the weekend described a desperate scramble for self-preservation, with panicked mountaineers abandoning one another in the search for a way down the steep rock face. Some of the victims were swept away by a column of ice that snapped near the summit of K2 -- widely regarded as the world's most treacherous peak -- in northern Pakistan near the Chinese border.

No one wanted to move out of the little apartment building on North Spaulding Avenue. The rents were low, the neighborhood lively. Most days, actor and masseur Johnny Ray strolled up the street with his potbellied pig, Harley. Tibor Reis, 78, tipped his fedora in greeting as he headed, in a suit, to his Orthodox synagogue. Before leaving for work to answer phones, Tami Talebi mapped out macabre movies.

The plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Saturday gutted a nation's leadership and silenced some of the most potent human symbols of its tragic and tumultuous history. It was, in a sense, a nation colliding with its past: The aircraft ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

A Union Pacific maintenance worker who was killed in a collision with a Metrolink train has been identified as Roberto Ramirez, 56, of Visalia. Ramirez died of multiple traumatic injuries when the pickup truck he had been driving was struck by a Metrolink commuter train east of El Monte on March 20, said Lt. Brian Elias of the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The coroner's office considers the death an accident. Metrolink officials had earlier said there was no evidence that the employee deliberately placed himself in the train's path.

For more than three decades, Carlos Perez toiled at a downtown produce market to make a better life for his family. A proud and jovial father and grandfather, he would head to work when most Angelenos were still asleep. He would park his car in a lot on the east side of Alameda Street and walk across the wide lanes to start his 3 a.m. shift as a supervisor and driver at I&T Produce Co. But Monday, the 59-year-old Whittier man was struck mid-street by a car with an impact so hard that shards of glass scattered everywhere from broken headlights, and the car's skirting tore off. The driver of the dark Infiniti G35 sedan, which had been traveling north, sped away and disappeared.

Rescue workers found no one to save. They could only retrieve the corpses of those aboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea early Monday during a fierce winter storm. The Boeing 737-800 bound for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, was carrying eight crew members and 82 passengers when it crashed shortly after takeoff from Beirut amid hail and thunder. The U.S.-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon was among the passengers. By nightfall, rescue workers had recovered about 25 bodies, the Lebanese transportation minister said.

A Toyota Camry that had pulled over for a police car with its siren blaring was rear-ended by a Nissan pickup Wednesday morning in the San Fernando Valley, with the impact sending the truck careening onto nearby railroad tracks, where it was struck by a Metrolink commuter train, authorities said. A 38-year-old Sun Valley man driving the pickup and a child younger than 2 in the Toyota were critically injured. The child had been strapped into a car seat in the back, authorities said.

They'd been a father and son estranged -- going long periods barely speaking -- but who in recent months had begun the path to reconciliation on late-night walks to a nearby Fullerton train yard. Late Wednesday, however, Virgil Lamphier, 56, and his son, David, 23, were struck and killed by a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train as the pair walked the tracks about 11:15 p.m. What the two were doing on the tracks is still unclear. Authorities initially speculated that they had been train-spotting.

Three ski patrol members were killed Thursday at Mammoth Mountain ski area when they fell into a geothermal vent that they were working to fence off. Seven other ski patrollers were injured in the incident. The deaths bring the total this year to eight at the popular Eastern Sierra ski resort, which broke its all-time snowfall record Tuesday. This winter season has been a deadly one for California, with at least 13 skiers dying.

The message of the proposed freeway signs doesn't seem controversial, memorializing individuals killed in traffic accidents and urging California motorists to drive safely. But a proposal to allow families to pay the California Department of Transportation to put up dozens of such signs along state highways has been caught up in a revolt by environmentalists against what they see as the growing clutter of signs and billboards along California roadways. The latest flare-up involves plans to expand a program that allows families to pay $1,000 to cover the cost of signs that read, "Please Don't Drink and Drive -- In Memory of . . ."

Today's anniversary of the Chatsworth Metrolink disaster will yank again at the emotional tear in the tightly woven fabric of the Hefter family. Bright, full of potential and the baby of the house, Jacob Hefter was barely 18 -- and one of the youngest to die that Friday afternoon. Since those frantic first hours after the crash, Alan and Angela Hefter and their two surviving sons have struggled to adapt to life with a vital missing part. "The family you had prior to Sept.

A Hawthorne driver who struck a 72-year-old pedestrian, forced the woman into her car and sped off has been sentenced to state prison, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Wednesday. Alexis Lewis, 27, got a five-year term after pleading no contest to one count of kidnapping. As a result of the May 26 plea bargain, one count of felony evading police and three counts of child endangerment were dismissed at the sentencing. Earlier that month, Lewis left her three children -- ages 2, 3 and 4 -- unattended at home and set off in her car. After hitting the woman at a Hawthorne intersection, Lewis stopped briefly, got out and pushed the woman into her car and drove off. As Lewis sped away, an undercover police officer arrived and notified other officers.