Accidental Deaths

She raced to the hearse as it pulled up to Our Lady of Victory Church just after 10 a.m. Saturday and opened the vehicle's back door. For a moment, it was as if 29-year-old Rory Kennedy planned single-handedly to carry her brother Michael's heavy mahogany coffin into the gray and white church where, for years, the Kennedy family has worshiped in the happy days of summer. But just as swiftly, the youngest of Robert F.

Divers scoured the water for survivors and passengers told of Titanic-style pandemonium and being abandoned by crew members Saturday after a luxury cruise liner was ripped open by rocks off the Italian coast. At least three people died and 40 were injured in the accident near Tuscany, which forced more than 4,200 passengers and crew members to abandon the ship Costa Concordia on Friday evening. Dramatic photos taken Saturday showed the jumbo liner tipped over in the water, a long gash in its hull, near the small island of Giglio.

Low fuel, a hard-to-reach handle to switch gas tanks and modifications to his homemade airplane may have figured in the crash that killed singer John Denver last year, federal investigators said Monday. The National Transportation Safety Board, wrapping up the fact-finding phase of its investigation into the Oct. 12 crash, also confirmed that Denver lacked an aviation medical certificate--a requirement for a valid pilot's license--at the time of the crash.

The water at Yosemite National Park may be beautiful as it tumbles and roars out of the mountains, crystal snowmelt in a granite bed. But Jake Bibee remembers what he told his friend: "You have to respect the water. " Bibee, a 28-year-old carpenter who grew up in Angels Camp, northwest of the park, had brought Amanda Lee, a visitor from Missouri, to the top of Vernal Fall on Tuesday -- her first visit to Yosemite, but the latest of many for him. They were standing behind a metal barricade, peering at the cascade.

A 19-year-old man drowned Saturday after he chased a soccer ball into the lake at MacArthur Park, authorities said. "He jumped in to retrieve a soccer ball and got out too far," said Los Angeles police spokesman Don Cox. The victim was not identified. Onlookers, including the young man's brother, went in after him but couldn't find the body, Cox said. Four county lifeguards with scuba gear joined city park rangers and firefighters in the search, city fire spokesman Jim Wells said.

Poor design of their pressure suits led the seven astronauts aboard the Columbia space shuttle to black out almost immediately as the craft started breaking apart during reentry in 2003, and they were probably killed by the violent contortions, a NASA panel said Tuesday. Other design flaws with seat belts, helmets and parachutes also could have caused their deaths if they had survived the depressurization and intense buffeting, the panel said in its final report on the incident.

Two El Segundo toddlers found dead in their beds last spring were poisoned by oleander leaves from a neighbor's yard that they picked and ate, coroner's officials said Tuesday. The case of Alexei and Peter Wiltsey, ages 2 and 3, represents the first confirmed accidental deaths by oleander poisoning in county history, said coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier.

Wanda Sapp often visited movie sets to watch her daughter perform stunts. She never dreamed she'd watch her daughter die. Sapp and two of her other children were present in November, when Sonja Davis fell to her death while working as a stunt double on the upcoming Eddie Murphy film "Vampire in Brooklyn." The family is suing Paramount Studios and Eddie Murphy Productions for $10 million, alleging that the film crew failed to provide proper safety equipment.

A seriously ill patient died at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after nurses failed to respond "for an extended period" to audio alarms signaling his distress -- the seventh death in two years in which staffers have virtually ignored vital sign monitors, Los Angeles County health officials said Tuesday. The incident, which took place in March, was one of four reported to the county Board of Supervisors in the last week in which patients allegedly received questionable care.

Actor Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of the late kung fu star Bruce Lee, was killed Wednesday after a small explosive charge used to simulate gunfire went off inside a grocery bag during filming on a movie set in Wilmington, N.C. Lee, who many believed was on the threshold of stardom similar to that attained by his father two decades earlier, had been working on the $14-million movie "The Crow," produced by Edward Pressman and Jeff Most.

We've all heard about — and many of us have experienced — unexpected charges showing up on phone bills. But what about fees siphoned from your bank account? What about those fees being taken by an affiliate of your bank? And what can you do when your bank won't help because it claims you gave "phone authorization" for something like accidental death insurance, even though you never signed any paperwork? That's the situation Sumati Rao, 62, of Rancho Palos Verdes found herself in after discovering she'd been charged $20 a month for about two years for accidental death coverage provided by a company called Level AD Insurance.

Flames swept through a three-floor apartment building in Illinois early Sunday, killing six, injuring 12 and forcing some residents to leap from their windows to escape, authorities said. One person escaped by climbing hand over hand along a cable before dropping to the ground. Firefighters rescued at least five people from the building in Aurora, about 40 miles west of Chicago, authorities said. A 2-year-old girl was in critical condition at Loyola University Medical Center's burn unit.

Freestyle motocross racer Jeff 'Ox' Kargola of San Clemente died Friday from injuries sustained during a punishing, 1,300-mile adventure ride through Mexico's Baja Peninsula, according to event sponsors. Kargola was 27. Kargola crashed during the second day of the Desert Assassins' 2011 Rip to the Tip desert motocross event -- an eight-day contest among 30 dirt-bike racers who cross mountains, beaches and desert between the border city of Mexicali and Cabo San Lucas. "Jeff was attended to by medical personnel on site and was transported via helicopter to the San Felipe hospital where he passed away due to his injuries," read an event statement.

After five days of surfing and Mexican food, the three buddies were flying home to the South Bay from Scorpion Bay, the world-class surf break on the Baja Peninsula. They had eaten a roasted pig with other travelers, watched an off-road truck race and enjoyed the sun. But on the last leg of their journey home, the trip took a tragic turn. Veteran pilot and surfer Chuck Chambers radioed air traffic controllers that he was diverting his four-seat plane to John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana because it was low on fuel.

U.S. and allied forces have failed to reduce the number of civilian fatalities caused by them in Afghanistan despite a two-year effort by American commanders, internal U.S. military statistics show. Civilian deaths have risen 11% from 144 at this time last year to 160 in 2010. The increase has coincided with the rising number of incidents in which U.S. and NATO attack helicopters mistakenly fired on Afghans who turned out to be civilians, the previously unreleased statistics show.

A foolish housekeeping mistake ended up costing the life of a beloved giant panda at the Jinan Zoo in China last week. Zoo staff were disinfecting an area that shared a ventilation system with the enclosure for Quan Quan , a 21-year-old panda that had given birth to seven cubs, earning her the title of "heroic mother." Toxic fumes from the cleaning job caused her lungs to collapse. Tragic accidents can befall animals in any setting — at a zoo, in a forest. But there is a special responsibility due to animals when humans hold them in captivity.

David Snow didn't even want lawn darts when he went shopping last April. He wanted a volleyball set, but all the department store had was volleyball in a combo pack with two other games. Fine. He took it. The darts would stay in the box.

A Brentwood middle school was enveloped in grief Friday after a 13-year-old girl was fatally injured when she was struck by two hit-and-run drivers as she walked to a school bus filled with classmates. Julia Siegler, an eighth-grader at Harvard-Westlake Middle School, was rushed to UCLA Medical Center, where she died. Authorities said the girl was crossing Sunset Boulevard against a red light at Cliffwood Drive about 7:20 a.m. when she was struck, first by a Toyota Highlander and then by an Infiniti.

A crash involving a Greyhound bus en route from Los Angeles to Sacramento killed six people and injured 20 others, according to the California Highway Patrol. The deadly sequence of events began shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday as three young women in a dark-blue Chevrolet Trailblazer were traveling north on California Highway 99 in Fresno. The Trailblazer made a sharp left turn from the right-hand lane, struck the median rail, rolled over and blocked the fast lane, said CHP Central Division Chief Jim Abrames.

The body of their president was finishing a long journey home Sunday, and by the tens of thousands, Poles poured into the streets of a paralyzed capital to watch it pass. It seemed as if nobody could bear to sit at home, as if they had to take some physical part in a national tragedy that happened in a place that was braided into the Polish psyche -- and yet lay distant, on the far side of a geographic border and an ideological boundary. The remains of President Lech Kaczynski were recovered from the site of the plane crash in Russia that killed 96 people Saturday, including many top Polish officials and leading figures from the nation's recent history.