Bayview Medical Center

The Chinese national killed in a van accident on Interstate 895 Monday afternoon was the director of a drama troupe visiting the United States, an official at the Chinese Embassy in Washington said yesterday.Liu Huai Zheng, 65, who was killed when the van in which he was riding crashed near Washington Boulevard, was director of the Chengdu Drama Troupe in Sichuan Province, said Xiao Guang Guo, second secretary of the embassy's Cultural Office.Guo said he was unsure whether the actors traveling with Zheng were in the United States to perform.

Fifteen Dundalk Senior High School students were taken to two area hospitals yesterday morning after a car hit the rear of the school bus in which they were riding, police said. The bus, driven by Billy R. Baker, 30, was traveling north in the 3400 block of Sollers Point Road about 7:30 a.m. when it slowed to pick up students at Yorkway. A car driven by Breon Johnston, 18, struck the bus' left rear bumper, said Cpl. Vickie Warehime, a Baltimore County police spokeswoman. The accident occurred before Baker activated the bus' yellow warning lights, Warehime said.

The pilot of an Army single-engine airplane was injured yesterday when the craft flipped over during an emergency landing in a farmer's field in North Point, eastern Baltimore County, a state official said.John Surrick, spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources, said Stephen McNamara, 53, of Damascus, Montgomery County, apparently ran out of gas about 6 p.m. while flying to Annapolis. Surrick was trying to land the Cessna 152 on a state-owned farm off the 8900 block of North Point Road when it flipped over.

Baltimore County police are investigating the cause of a three-car accident that left two men dead late Sunday night after a motorist crossed the double yellow line on Philadelphia Road in Bradshaw. Terrence Joseph Reddy, 55, of 1100 Plaza Circle in Joppa was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, which occurred about 11 p.m. just north of Bradshaw Road. Police said he had been driving a 1993 Toyota Camry north in the southbound lanes of Philadelphia Road when he hit a 1998 Dodge Neon head-on.

Two people died yesterday and three were injured in a three-car collision at Route 152 and Franklinville Road near Joppatowne, state police said.The passengers of one car, Robert Patrick Purkey, 28, of the 1100 block of Mace Ave. in Baltimore and Patrick Dean Fisher, 35, of the 300 block of Stevens Circle in Aberdeen were killed in the crash at 7: 52 a.m., Maryland State Police said. The car's driver, Gabriele A. Cook, 25, of New Castle, Del., was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where she was in critical condition.

Twenty-two people were hospitalized last night with carbon monoxide poisoning, and the eastern Baltimore County apartment complex where they live was evacuated, a county Fire Department spokesman said.Firefighters were called to Ross Ridge Apartments in the first block of Parham Circle in Rossville about 5 p.m. after members of a family in a ground-floor apartment, who had been feeling ill for several days, bought a carbon monoxide detector that went off as soon as it was installed, said Battalion Chief Mark Hubbard, the spokesman.

A Circuit Court judge yesterday sentenced a man to life in prison for killing a rival drug dealer two years ago in a dispute over territory in Southeast Baltimore, city prosecutors said. Kenneth Mahai of Parkville was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and weapons violations in August. Prosecutors said Mahai had been indicted twice in the crime. After the first charge in April 2006, prosecutors said a key witness disappeared after being threatened, and the murder charge had to be dropped.

Three people were taken to Baltimore trauma centers last weekend after being injured in two separate crashes. The first was last Friday, when a car and delivery truck collided at the intersection of Juniata and Superior streets. The second was just about 24 hours later on Route 155 near Graceview Drive. In the first, Chester James Dawson, 80, of the 400 block of South Tollgate Road in Bel Air, driving a Subaru Forrester, turned into a box delivery truck stopped and waiting to turn onto Superior Street to go to Route 155. Dawson's car hit the delivery truck right in the middle and went underneath.

Nickolas G. Staffa, a retired autoworker and longtime Dundalk resident, died Sunday of complications from an infection at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He was 91. Mr. Staffa was born in Baltimore, the son of immigrant parents from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was raised in Locust Point. He attended Polytechnic Institute. He became an assembly line worker at General Motor's old Broening Highway plant in 1935 and was promoted to upholsterer and repairman. He was later trained as a toolmaker, a position he held until he retired in 1975.

Baltimore County police are searching for a man who they say raped and tortured a 56-year-old woman he picked up in Fells Point on July 4. Police said the woman was raped, beaten and burned with an iron for several hours. The woman said she got into the man's vehicle, described as an older model red car, in the 200 block of S. Broadway in Baltimore about 9:30 p.m. Police think she was driven to a house in the eastern part of the county, where the attack occurred. "She met the man and agreed to drive with him," said Bill Toohey, a police spokesman.