Accidental Death

It is so hard to comprehend. Four youngsters, ages 3 to 8, and one adult killed at a bus stop by a runaway sports car near the headquarters of the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn. Such a senseless accident, with innocent children bearing the brunt of the impact. It is another reminder that life's end can come at any moment, without warning. Sometimes there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Accidental death snatches young people prematurely in so many forms, but the circumstances many times seem bizarre, or at least beyond the comforting boundaries of most people's typical everyday existence -- drug abuse, drive-by shootings, a mother drowning her children.

If Italian playwright Dario Fo had opened the New York Times last week to read the announcement of his Nobel Prize in literature, he would have gotten a chuckle. Irony was written all over the page.Right next to the Nobel news, which had been greeted with "guarded amazement" and "outright dismay" by the Vatican, was an article headlined "Italian Government Falls." Accompanying it was a big photograph of the prime minister da giorno, Romano Prodi, with the face of a man who has just eaten 16 dill pickles and is feeling the backlash.

BOSTON -- The number of U.S. children and teen-agers orphaned by AIDS will top 80,000 by the end of the decade, rivaling the family-shattering impact of cancer and motor vehicle accidents, according to a study published today.Unlike in many other fatal diseases and accidental death, however, the loss of a parent from acquired immune deficiency syndrome leaves behind children who are especially vulnerable, ashamed of their plight and in need of customized programs, say the study's authors and others who are beginning to monitor the problem.

An Essex construction worker is in critical but stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center at University Hospital in Baltimore after a 25- to 30-foot fall at a Linthicum construction site Thursday.John M. Lane, of the first block of Carvello Drive in Essex, was on a suspended steel beam attempting to fasten it onto the second story of a building in the 1500 block of West Nursery Road when it collidedwith another beam, knocking him to the ground, police said.Lane, who was not wearing any safety restraints, was flown to shock trauma.

A few years ago author Tom Wolfe struck a chord with his satirical novel "Bonfire of the Vanities," about the social forces set in motion by a fatal traffic accident involving a white motorist and a black teen-ager. Now life may be imitating art as New Yorkers struggle to come to grips with the aftermath of two days of rioting touched off by a real-life incident eerily reminiscent of the one described in Wolfe's fictional yarn.The trouble began Monday when a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic grand rabbi struck and killed a black 7-year-old and seriously injured another in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

Drug abuse. Drive-by shootings. Child abuse. Drunken driving. Horseplay. Accidental death snatches young people prematurely in so many forms, but the circumstances many times seem bizarre, or at least beyond the comforting boundaries of most people's everyday existence.But four children, ages 3 to 8, get mowed down by a speeding car on the sidewalk at a bus stop, while awaiting a ride to the sitter's, accompanied by adults and singing a little song, and the calamity leaves a more lasting fear and a hollow ache.

Services were held for Glen Burnie resident Colby A. McFayden April 28 at Glen Burnie Baptist Church.Mr. McFayden, 28, died an accidental death while suffering a seizure at work March 15 at Baltimore Harbor. His body was recovered April 25.A graduate of Andover Senior High School, he was employed as a security guard for the Light House Point Marina Center.He was a member of the Glen Burnie Volunteer Fire Department and the Epilepsy Association of Anne Arundel County.His other interests included ministering to people with physical and spiritual needs, working out, bike riding, coin collecting and Bible study.

Bariatic surgery class offered Upper Chesapeake Health will offer a free class, "Bariatric Sur gery: New Course For Life" at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 12 in the Havre de Grace Room at Harford Me morial Hospital. Participants can learn wheth er the surgery is right for them. Members of Upper Chesa peake's bariatric surgery staff will present the class. Information: 800-515-0044. Support group for grieving adults Upper Chesapeake Health will hold a new support group, "Adults Grieving from a Child's Accidental Death," starting at 7 p.m. on Sept.

A great deal is not yet known about the horrific quadruple murders in Cockeysville that have led police to charge a 15-year-old honor student with murdering his parents and two younger brothers. But this much is clear: The presence of a gun in the house did not protect the Browning family; it put them at a greater risk of violence. Baltimore County police say Nicholas W. Browning used his father's handgun to kill his family on Friday night. While such familicide is hardly common, numerous studies have shown that having a gun in the home can be exceedingly dangerous.

The mother of a Baltimore man who disappeared while on a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 seven months ago is seeking to have him declared dead, saying she needs to accept that he probably will never come home.William Mark Bernhardt vanished Nov. 12 from the luxury liner while it was in the open ocean off the coast of Virginia. He and his mother, Mary B. Bernhardt, had taken a cruise to the Caribbean to celebrate his 41st birthday, which would have been a month later.The U.S. Coast Guard searched an area 206 miles long and 10 miles wide from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay before suspending the search.