Wheelchairs

Ben Carpenter got the ride of his life when his electric wheelchair became lodged in the grille of a big rig and was accidentally pushed down a highway for several miles at about 50 mph. Carpenter's father, Donald, was incredulous when police called to tell him his 21-year-old son was OK after the ride. "I said, 'What happened?' " Donald Carpenter recalled Thursday. He said his son, who has muscular dystrophy, had started to cross an intersection Wednesday afternoon in Paw Paw, Mich.

Standing before 1,400 students in Riverside's Martin Luther King High School gymnasium, Trais Hand solemnly apologized Wednesday for killing a mother of two in her wheelchair. Trais, 16, quietly spoke of the night in October when, a month after obtaining his driver's license, he was involved in a street race and his car went up a sidewalk and killed 38-year-old Reyna De Leon.

A gunman in a wheelchair opened fire on a crowded street in San Francisco's Tenderloin district early Saturday, killing a woman and wounding four other people, police said. San Francisco police officers arrested Walter Simon, 32, of Richmond as he tried to flee in his wheelchair shortly after midnight, police Sgt. Neville Gittens said. A gun believed to have been used in the shootings was recovered nearby. Witnesses later identified Simon as the gunman, Gittens said.

CARRIE Ann Lucas is confined to a wheelchair. She breathes with the aid of a ventilator. She cannot hear and can see only at close range. She begins most days about 4 a.m. with newspapers and e-mails. About 5:30, she wakes her three disabled daughters. She and an aide dress the two who use wheelchairs. The girls cannot feed themselves, so Lucas and the aide plug feeding tubes into their bellies. She pours cereal for the one daughter who can eat on her own.

The Nov. 13 articles, "Getting there is none of the fun" and "2.3 miles is a lot longer this way," provide welcome coverage of the barriers confronting wheelchair users who want to go where everyone has gone before. Uneven pavement, cars parked across driveways, sprinklers that water the sidewalk and other barriers may mean getting there late or not getting there at all. Fortunately, however, disability rights activists such as John Lonberg and Ben Rockwell are illuminating barriers that deny wheelchair users full and equal participation.

When John Lonberg travels the sidewalks outside his Riverside home, he is constantly reminded of the inequities of being in a wheelchair. Within sight of his home on Kloiber Street are at least a dozen possible violations of civil rights laws that grant the disabled equal access to public rights of way. Buckled sidewalks obstruct his path, street corners lack wheelchair ramps, and sloping driveways that cross sidewalks are difficult to navigate.

Not being paralyzed from the waist down, I never thought much about sidewalks. No reason to. Though often cracked, uneven and worn, the most basic of public rights of way always got me to my destination. That perspective changed recently after I spent five hours in an electric wheelchair navigating several miles of sidewalk on Pacific Coast Highway in central Long Beach. For the ambulatory, the stretch is an easy walk.

Dwight Smith, who runs the Catholic Worker homeless shelter in Santa Ana, couldn't believe it last week when he saw that a homeless woman in a wheelchair had been dropped off on his front walkway. "I hope you don't think you're staying here," he said, pointing to the steps that must be climbed to get into the house. Donna Tangeman, who had just $3 in her pocket, said her heart dropped.

A Huntington Beach man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $6 million in restitution for a Medicare billing scam in which unneeded motorized wheelchairs and other items were prescribed for patients. Prosecutors said that Phu Luong, 51, used the money he netted to buy a boat, expensive cars and a waterfront home, and pay off Las Vegas gambling debts.

As defending champions of the unlimited division, Gimps R Us had plenty at stake. But in the third and final inning of their second game, the Gimps were down 3-0 with two men out, and they'd already lost their first game. "All right, this is it, a two-out rally," Jerry Newman shouted to teammate Rick Rehhaut, who settled deeper into his wheelchair and brandished a fat plastic bat. "Need three runs. We gotta get five hits."