Wheelchair

A whirring mechanical lift raised Davien Graham's wheelchair to the witness stand in Department X on the fourth floor of the Los Angeles County courthouse in Alhambra. Pain burned at the base of his spine. His eyes met Jimmy Santana's for the first time since the shooting. He thought Santana seemed much smaller sitting at the defense table than he had with the gun in his hand. In his baggy blue jail uniform, he looked like a child. Two months earlier, on Jan. 12, 2008, Davien had been gunned down as he rode his bike in front of his church, a bystander in a gang war that had raged in Monrovia for two years.

It's not so easy for wheelchair users to flag down accessible cabs in New York City. Of the 13,000 taxis in Manhattan, just 233 are equipped to handle wheelchairs. How do you find one when you need one without making a reservation in advance? Enter Accessible Dispatch , a service that started in September and is designed to cut down on wait times when a wheelchair user needs a taxi. Here's how it works: The company uses GPS to track all the accessible taxis in the city. When a call for a taxi is made, the closest available cab is sent for the pick up. Passengers pay the metered fare only; the cost of "deadhead miles" (the time it takes for the cab to get to the passenger)

Houston police shot and killed a mentally ill double amputee in a wheelchair after he threatened an officer with a pen, authorities said. Police arrived at a personal care home early Saturday morning after the man, Brian Claunch, started threatening his caretaker because he wouldn't give Claunch cigarettes and soda, John Garcia, the home's owner, told local media. The orderly called the police. When they arrived, Claunch - who had  one arm and one leg and was in his mid-40s - cornered one officer while waving around a weapon, police said.

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.   --Jewish proverb The drive from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan was abruptly curtailed when I arrived at the wrong border crossing. The crossing was closed for repairs and there was supposedly another one about 60 miles away. The only sticking point: I had no idea how to get there. Fortunately for me, an Uzbekistan stranger did. However, he wanted to be paid for his services. 200,000 som to be precise. I didn't have 200,000 som (about $100)

CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- Victims of the Aurora movie-theater shooting-- one in a wheelchair -- and many of their relatives came to the Arapahoe County Courthouse on Monday morning as the prosecution and defense teams prepared to hear the charges against suspect James E. Holmes. Holmes has been in custody since the July 20 shooting that left 12 dead and 58 injured in the shooting in the Denver suburb. He is expected to face a range of charges including first-degree murder. Relatives of the youngest shooting victim killed, 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, were among the first in line for one of 35 courtroom seats reserved for victims and their family members.

The essential demands of creating a reality television series inevitably foil even the best intentions of capturing real life. And this being the entertainment industry, not everyone of course has the best intentions. Situational shows, in which a group of carefully cast people is assembled and forced to interact as "friends," are the worst offenders. They are often so scripted, manipulated and edited that the only thing separating them from nonreality shows is the level of acting and the union dues.

Cyclist Anthony Zahn of Riverside, winner of a bronze medal in the individual time trial road event at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, is accustomed to racing the clock. But he's also engaged in a bigger and unwinnable race, a battle he's facing with humor and courage. Zahn, 37, has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a hereditary disorder that affects the nerves in the arms and legs and leads to loss of sensation and atrophied muscles. It has no cure and Zahn said Friday there are correlations between high-intensity activity — such as cycling — and an acceleration of the disease.

Question: I am wheelchair-bound, so I was excited to be able to rent an apartment in a rental community built in 2010. I assumed that a nearly new complex would be built to the latest design specifications and include buildings and common areas where I could live comfortably. But now that I have moved in, I am running into a number of limitations because I cannot easily maneuver my wheelchair. For example, many of the doors on the property are too narrow for my chair. A friend who works in property management told me that newly constructed housing should be accessible to wheelchair users.

A 66-year-old Frenchwoman who was abducted by a band of Somali gunmen at the beginning of the month has died in captivity, French authorities announced Wednesday. Marie Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, lived in a modest beachfront house on Manda Island in the Lamu resort archipelago on Kenya's northern coast. She was seized by gunmen, thrown into a speedboat and taken to Somalia, a war-torn country that has become a base for piracy. Kenyan authorities unsuccessfully pursued the kidnappers.

Walter Molo wouldn't go. "Go, Molo, go!" his friends yelled. The once-avid motorcycle rider is not one to shy from adventure. But to dive 4 feet down a steep concrete embankment — in a wheelchair, while paralyzed from the waist down? "Yeah," Molo said, gripping his wheels a few feet from the edge. "I'm gonna have to take a moment to think this one over. " A skateboarding park on Venice Beach transformed into a training ground Saturday morning as several dozen paraplegics and quadriplegics learned to drop, roll and dive on curved walls as tall as school buses.