Traffic Accidents Los Angeles

A Granada Hills High School junior critically injured in a Mother's Day auto accident died after a nearly weeklong struggle to live, a hospital spokeswoman said Monday. Emily Pilkinton, 17, was pronounced dead at 10:36 a.m. Saturday, said Tiffani Duval, spokeswoman for Providence Holy Cross Hospital. Pilkinton was hospitalized after suffering massive head injuries when the car she was riding in slammed into a parked moving van May 9 on the Wilbur Avenue bridge over the 118 Freeway.

A repeat drunk driver who sped down Sherman Way at more than 80 mph, rear-ended another car, then held a vanity mirror and dabbed at her face as the other driver screamed and burned to death in his car, was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder. A jury of six men and six women deliberated three days before finding that Susan Conkey Rhea, 39, had earned a murder conviction and stiff sentence by showing a disregard for human life in continuing to drink and drive.

With the mournful wail of a bagpipe and admonitions from a police chaplain to put aside feelings of guilt and anger, more than 2,000 members of the Los Angeles Police Department joined Mayor Tom Bradley and other mourners to bid a last farewell Friday to three officers killed earlier this week when two patrol cars collided downtown. At the two-hour funeral service at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, which was attended by about 3,000 people, Police Chief Daryl F.

A motorist's attempt to defog his car's windows by adjusting the defroster is what apparently left two of three UPS workers dead as they drove home late Wednesday night, police said. Valley Traffic Officer Paul Skinner said Peter Michael Papadakis, 23, and two friends had just hopped into his car at about 10:10 p.m. on Densmore Avenue, near Stagg Street, when the car began to drift to the curb.

Two best friends were killed Thursday when a suspected drunk driver ran a red light and sheared their car in half, the second fatal accident since Christmas Day at a Northridge intersection that neighbors claim is too dangerous. Killed in the crash at Corbin Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard were Barbara N. Paull, 19, the driver, and her college friend, Stephanie Tourikian, 19, of Ontario, Canada.

A Los Angeles police officer Thursday shot and wounded a man who crashed a stolen recreational vehicle into seven cars and injured another officer while attempting to flee, police said. The shooting occurred about 1:30 a.m. in the 11200 block of Telfair Avenue in Pacoima, Detective Raul Reyna said. Charles Parmenter, 39, was treated at Holy Cross Medical Center for a gunshot wound in the shoulder and arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a police officer, Reyna said.

In the sixth carjacking in less than a week in the central San Fernando Valley, a 16-year-old gunman forced a driver to turn over the keys to his Mustang convertible, then led police on a chase along the Ventura Freeway before crashing the car in Hollywood, the Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday.

At least two people were injured Sunday evening after a car chase ended in a collision and an officer-involved shooting at a Van Nuys intersection, police said. Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department's Foothill Division began the pursuit, which ended in an accident at the intersection of Fulton Avenue and Oxnard Street shortly before 8 p.m., Officer William Duke said. One of the vehicles apparently rammed into a nearby house, police said.

A woman in her 40s was killed and six people injured, two of them critically, in a traffic accident Tuesday night, Los Angeles fire officials said. Four people suffered minor injuries in the accident in the 7500 block of Balboa Boulevard shortly before 9:30 p.m., Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis said. The two-vehicle accident involved a minivan and a BMW sedan.