Auto Accidents

There were lots of tears but also some smiles Monday as more than 2,000 people--many of them teenagers--gathered at an Irvine church to remember Kristin Godfrey, the 16-year-old Woodbridge High School student killed in a lunchtime car crash last week. "This is an overwhelming show of support," said Dan Rasmussen, an official of the city's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which set up live video feeds from the sanctuary to three other rooms to handle the overflow crowd.

"I don't know if you can see the scar," Ryan Nece says. Barely. "It goes from here to here." He stretches his right hand over to his left ear, extending the thumb inside the closely cropped dark hair as a pointer, then drags it over the bend of the skull to the other side. "I had an operation," he says. "They cut me open from ear to ear." For the reconstruction. "They pull down your skin, they cut underneath my eyes. I have titanium plates all through here."

A Van Nuys lawyer was among 14 people arrested Tuesday in connection with an alleged scam in which participants staged auto accidents and faked injuries to collect insurance money, authorities said. Attorney Inna Elana Gofman was arrested by FBI agents who searched her law office in the 6300 block of Van Nuys Boulevard, said Special Agent Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the bureau's San Diego field office.

Andrew Wen can pinpoint the exact moment and the exact spot golf got rough. He even remembers the weather conditions. "It was raining that day" [in 1993], said Wen, now a junior at UC Irvine. "It was June 3 and I was so happy because I had finished my SATs the previous day. I was sitting in traffic on the freeway and this lady rear-ended me." Wen's injuries weren't severe, but they have lingered. Two weeks ago, on the first day of the U.S.

Using two lawyers' offices as fronts, a fraud ring processed claims from hundreds of staged and fabricated auto accidents, bilking insurance companies out of more than $4.6 million, the U.S. attorney's office said Thursday after the arrest of four suspects. Taken into custody were Arkady Rozenberg, 48, of Los Angeles, the alleged ringleader; Ilya Mestetsky, 50, of North Hollywood; Reuben Ross, 49, of Alta Loma; and Rebecca Martinez, 33, of Los Angeles.

Allstate Insurance Co. on Monday said it is suing 45 doctors, lawyers and others in the largest auto-insurance fraud case in its history and was seeking $107 million in statutory damages and attorneys' fees. Allstate, which served papers to defendants throughout the Los Angeles area, seeks $107 million under a 1993 state law that allows for damages three times actual losses, in addition to a $10,000 fine for each false claim.

Channel 4 sportscaster Fred Roggin escaped with minor injuries but his car was totaled in an accident near the NBC studios in Burbank on Friday night. Roggin who had just finished the 11 p.m. newscast, was at the intersection of Alameda Avenue and Hollywood Way and was about to enter the 134 Freeway when his car was hit by another car. He was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital, suffering from a separated shoulder and a laceration under his left eye. He was treated and released.

Half an hour after a woman was fatally injured by a hit-and-run driver in downtown Ventura, a girl was killed and three others badly hurt in a second wreck a few miles away. The first accident happened at 6:55 p.m. on eastbound Thompson Boulevard when a man driving a gray Ford Ranger pickup struck a woman as she crossed near Ash Street, said Ventura Police Sgt. Bob Velez.