Traffic Accidents Los Angeles County

Despite a stricter blood-alcohol legal limit and a high-profile campaign exhorting motorists to "buckle up," eight people were killed in traffic accidents in Los Angeles County during the Labor Day weekend, the California Highway Patrol reported Tuesday. Sixty-five fatalities were recorded across the state, topping last year's Labor Day weekend toll, officials said.

A powerful Pacific storm pummeled Southern California with rain, wind and snow Wednesday, snarling commuter traffic with scores of fender-benders and sending torrents of muddy runoff down normally dry washes and riverbeds. But despite the heavy runoff, there weren't many mudslides and rock falls, even below hillsides stripped bare by recent brush fires. In South Los Angeles, employees fled into downpours when winds tore part of the roof from a church where they worked.

An Alhambra man was killed on the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena on Monday in the latest in a series of perplexing wrong-way crashes that have claimed seven lives in the region since late July. Wrong-way driver Carlos Ruiz, 24, was one of 10 people killed in traffic accidents in Los Angeles County over the Labor Day weekend. Ruiz was driving east in the westbound lanes about 4 a.m. at speeds around 100 mph when he crashed head-on into a concrete wall, authorities said.

In just a few minutes Thursday night, Paul Wilcox Jr. became both a widower and a father. Moments after his wife Vickie was killed in a traffic collision that also killed a teen-ager, paramedics rushed the body of the 8 1/2-months-pregnant woman to a hospital, where doctors performed a Caesarean section. They delivered a strong 6-pound, 12-ounce boy. The dead woman's father said Friday that he believes his as yet unnamed grandson is a gift from God.

The 13-year-old son of actor Pierce Brosnan was seriously hurt early Saturday in what police suspect was a drunk-driving accident on a steep mountain road, authorities said.. Sean Brosnan suffered multiple fractures and spinal injuries when the car in which he was riding plunged 150 to 200 feet over the embankment of a winding private road, said Officer Frank Sansone of the California Highway Patrol. The incident occurred just east of Kanan Dume Road about 3:45 a.m. The driver, James P.

The second major rainstorm of the week pounded the San Fernando Valley on Friday, flooding streets and causing power outages and traffic accidents, including a cluster of chain-reaction fender-benders on the Ventura Freeway that banged up more than 50 vehicles. More rain is forecast over the next four days, although it is predicted to be of less intensity, said a forecaster for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

One moment, you're listening to your car radio to soothe the aggravation of yet another gridlocked hour. The next, you're frantically pushing on the brakes as traffic suddenly stops. But it's too little, too late. And when that split second has elapsed, you've joined the not-so-exclusive ranks of accident victims. There were more than 132,000 traffic accidents in Los Angeles County alone in 1997, from fender benders to serious crashes involving fatalities.

A Pomona Superior Court jury convicted drunk driver Keith Cook on Friday in the death of Jadine Russell, rejecting the Azusa auto mechanic's claim that his victim caused her own demise when she declined a blood transfusion for religious reasons.

The drum roll of traffic tragedy in the San Fernando Valley area continued Friday with an accident that killed three members of a Northern California family, including one each of two sets of twins on their way to a sister's wedding. The crash on the Golden State Freeway near Castaic also killed the twins' father and critically injured their mother and the other two twins. The crash capped a week of multi-death traffic accidents in the Valley area.

Deadheads, those tie-died devotees of freedom and self-expression, call their favorite rock group, the Grateful Dead, a purveyor of peace, love and understanding. But, for the second time in five months in the Los Angeles area, authorities said Monday, the drug culture that surrounds the Bay Area-based band's concerts has led to untimely death.