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Nation in brief

Another Indiana school mourns

By TIMES WIRES
Published April 28, 2006

UPLAND, Ind. - A week of celebrations turned to mourning on a university campus Thursday after a highway crash killed five students and staff members as they headed home after setting up for a scholarship banquet.

It was the second deadly crash in a week involving an Indiana school. Together, the accidents killed 10 people, nine of them students at either Taylor University or Indiana University.

On the Taylor campus Thursday, the chapel filled to capacity as more than 1,500 people from the evangelical Christian school remembered the four students and one staff member killed Wednesday night when a tractor-trailer hit their van on Interstate 69.

"It's like we're still waiting for a phone call that says "this isn'treal,' " said Eugene Habecker, the school's new president.

The five victims all worked in the university's dining services and had been preparing a banquet that was part of Habecker's inauguration celebration. Four others in the van were hospitalized, one in critical condition.

The van was about 10 miles north of Taylor's Upland campus, 60 miles northeast of Indianapolis, when the truck crashed through the median about 8 p.m. and slammed into it, authorities said.

As word of the deaths spread across the campus of 1,900 students, friends and classmates gathered in the chapel to pray.

Last weekend, Indiana University was in mourning after five music school graduate students died when their plane crashed in fog outside Bloomington. A preliminary investigation report, released Wednesday, found no mechanical problems with the plane.

Investigators were trying to determine why the semi had crashed through the median and into the van. The truck driver, identified by police as Robert F. Spencer, 27, of Canton, Mich., was hospitalized in fair condition Thursday.

Police identified the victims as Elizabeth A. Smith, 22, of Mount Zion, Ill.; Bradley J. Larson, 22, of Elm Grove, Wis.; Whitney E. Cerak, 18, of Gaylord, Mich.; Laurel E. Erb, 20, of St. Charles, Ill.; and Taylor University employee Monica Felver, 53, of Hartford City.

The university employee driving the van, Vickie L. Rhodes, 54, of Fairmount; employees Connie Magers, 50, of Gas City, and Michele M. Miller, 43, of Marion; and student Laura J. Vanryn, 22, of Caledonia, Mich., were hospitalized. Vanryn was in critical condition after being airlifted to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne.

TOPEKA, Kan. - Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was fined $1,500 by the state ethics commission Thursday for illegally soliciting campaign contributions from lobbyists.

The case involved an April 12 e-mail that Sebelius' re-election campaign sent to 92,000 supporters. Among those supporters, 39 appeared to be lobbyists, and 16 registered lobbyists actually received the e-mail, according to testimony before the commission.

State law prohibits legislators, statewide officials and candidates for those offices from seeking contributions from lobbyists, corporations and political action committees while the Legislature remains in session.

Sebelius' staff had described the e-mail as an update on education, but at the bottom was a link to the governor's campaign Web site, where people can make a contribution. The link itself said: "Make a contribution."

Sebelius' campaign paid the fine immediately.

The governor in a statment said she respected the ruling and looked forward to getting more "guidance on the use of e-mails, since this technology is becoming more widely used to communicate with voters."

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Jury deliberations in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial were suspended Thursday after a juror called in sick.

Deliberations were to resume today after the juror reported that he was feeling better, a court spokesman said.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema called lawyers for the defense and prosecution into court for a brief hearing Thursday morning to discuss logistics in light of the juror's illness.

After the hearing concluded and the judge and jurors had left the courtroom, Moussaoui jokingly took credit for the illness as he was led away: "Moussaoui biological warfare," he said.

FREDERICK, Md. - Five high school students were suspended after staging a "die-in" in front of a Marine Corps recruiting booth during a campus job fair, one of the students said.

Bob Hayes, a junior at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School, said he and four other students fell down in front of the booth, then handed out leaflets protesting the war in Iraq and the presence of military recruiters at school.

A sheriff's deputy took two students away after they refused to move, Hayes said. Three others went willingly.

SPRING, Texas - Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a 16-year-old Hispanic boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl at a party, authorities said.

The attackers forced the boy out of the Saturday night house party, beat him and sodomized him with a plastic pipe, shouting anti-Hispanic epithets, said sheriff's Lt. John Martin.

He was in critical condition.

Harris County prosecutor Mike Trent said the attackers also cut the victim, whose name was not released, with a knife. He was discovered 12 hours after the attack.

Keith Robert Turner, 17, and David Henry Tuck, 18, were charged with aggravated sexual assault, which carries a maximum of five years to life in prison, investigators said.

[Last modified April 28, 2006, 01:17:12]