Accident Victims

A helicopter returning from a North Sea oil platform went down off the northeast coast of Scotland with 16 people on board, and police said at least eight were killed. Scotland's Grampian Police said eight bodies had been recovered from the sea and that the search for the other passengers was continuing. A spokesman for the BP oil company said the helicopter was working for the company and was returning to Britain from an offshore oil field.

Los Angeles police are trying to find an ambulance driver who ran over and killed a man who was sleeping in a driveway. Police asked for the public's help Wednesday to track down the driver involved in the March 26 incident. A witness told police that 45-year-old David Ronald Bork was sleeping in the rear driveway of a business when a private ambulance struck him. Bork died at the scene of extensive head trauma. Police say there might have been a passenger in the ambulance.

The motorcyclist who was killed when he collided with a truck on a San Diego Freeway offramp has been identified as Lawrence Dale Rossow, 27, of Costa Mesa. Rossow was declared dead at the scene of the 9 p.m. accident on Thursday, Costa Mesa police said. He was identified by authorities late Friday.

Before he died in the TWA flight disaster last month, Brent Richey did not so much sail through life as plow through it, his mourners agreed Saturday. From the way he completed college in 2 1/2 years while editing both his school newspaper and its literary magazine to his recent double turn as a full-time law student and entrepreneur, the 26-year-old Van Nuys resident continuously sowed the seeds of a fertile mind, leaving accomplishments and admirers in his neatly cultivated tracks.

Driving with his three children just a few blocks from his Baltimore home last October, Robert Sanders leaned forward to change the radio station. Briefly distracted, he didn't see the red light until it was too late. He slammed on the brakes and skidded into another vehicle. The crash wasn't severe--Sanders said he was only moving about 10 mph at impact--but it was enough to set off the air bags in the 1995 Dodge Caravan. Sanders and his two sons, who were seated in the rear, were unhurt.

New York's Roman Catholic Cardinal John O'Connor devoted a special Mass to the relatives of the 230 people who perished when TWA Flight 800 exploded in midair a month ago. "This Mass is not--what has come to be, to me, almost a repugnant phrase--to bring closure," O'Connor told the 3,000 people at St. Patrick's Cathedral. "You don't bring closure to human suffering simply because a month has passed. . . . You work toward healing.

With 35 victims still unaccounted for, federal officials announced Wednesday that it appears unlikely all 230 of the bodies of the passengers and crew aboard TWA Flight 800 will ever be found. That grim appraisal came on a day when officials also announced that up to 30% of the plane's wreckage has now been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, including a 20,000-pound left wing that was severely burned at the point where it once had been attached to the main fuselage.

A 9-year-old boy was in critical condition after being struck by a car as he crossed a street near Camino Real Park, police said Wednesday. Bobby Mirshafiee of Orange appeared to have been playing at the park with his family about 4:40 p.m. Tuesday when he walked in front of a Jaguar heading west on Sycamore Avenue near Main Street, investigators said.

Investigators looking for clues to the TWA Flight 800 disaster worked to untangle a ton of twisted metal, gauges and wires that were once part of the cockpit. The examination of the demolished cockpit held out the prospect of advancing an investigation that so far has been unable to explain why the 747 jetliner blew up in flight over the ocean off Long Island, killing all 230 aboard. Searchers reported recovering one more body, raising to 195 the number of victims found.

Hundreds of mourners, some still in a state of disbelief, filled a Lynwood church to capacity Friday for the funeral Mass of a family of six killed last week when an alleged drunk driver plowed a pickup truck into their parked vehicle. Scores of others who could not fit inside St. Philip Neri Catholic Community Church spilled out onto its lawn as Father Jose Sanchez eulogized the close-knit family in Spanish.