STAMFORD, Conn.

Fire victim had long career as liquor company safety chief

A department store Santa Claus who died with his wife and three grandchildren in a Christmas morning house fire spent a long career trying to prevent danger as safety chief at a liquor company in Kentucky.

Lomer Johnson was remembered fondly as a stickler for safety by a former boss at Louisville, Ky.-based liquor maker Brown-Forman Corp., where Johnson retired from his job as safety and security director several years ago.

“He spent his career trying to keep others safe,” retired Brown-Forman executive Robert Holmes Jr. said Monday in a telephone interview.

The home’s owner, New York advertising executive Madonna Badger, and a male acquaintance escaped the blaze, which killed her parents, who were visiting for the holidays, and her three daughters, a 10-year-old and 7-year-old twins, police said.

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MIAMI

Helicopter crash kills surgeon getting heart for transplant

A surgeon from a Mayo Clinic in Florida who was flying across the northern corner of the state to retrieve a heart for transplant was killed Monday when his helicopter crashed, officials said.

The heart could not be used in another transplant because its viability expired, and the patient who had been scheduled to receive it continues to wait for a new organ .

The helicopter departed the clinic in Jacksonville around 5:45 a.m. but never arrived at the Gainesville hospital, Shands at University of Florida, which was about 60 miles to the southwest.

The helicopter went down about 40 miles east of Gainesville, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Heart surgeon Dr. Luis Bonilla, procurement technician David Hines and the pilot were killed.

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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.

Soldier paralyzed in shooting during his homecoming party

Police on Monday arrested a suspect in a shooting that critically wounded a soldier at his Southern California homecoming party.

Police said Ruben Ray Jurado turned himself in to authorities in Chino Hills, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. The 19-year-old had been sought in the attempted murder of Christopher Sullivan, 22.

Authorities allege Jurado shot Sullivan at the party Friday night after getting into an argument with the soldier’s brother over football teams.

Jurado, who had played football with Sullivan in high school, punched Sullivan’s brother and Sullivan intervened. Jurado then pulled a gun and fired multiple shots, hitting Sullivan in the neck, police said.

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Sullivan’s relatives said the Purple Heart recipient was hit twice by gunfire, which shattered his spine and left him paralyzed.

Sullivan had been wounded in a suicide bombing attack last year in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province while serving with the 101st Infantry Division. He had been recovering in Kentucky, where he is stationed.

SANTIAGO, Chile

Newspaper fined for recipe that exploded, burned cooks

Chile’s Supreme Court has ordered a newspaper to pay $125,000 to 13 people who suffered burns while trying out a published recipe for churros, a popular Latin American snack of dough fried in hot oil.

The publisher of La Tercera must pay individual damages to 11 women and two men ranging from as little as $279 to $48,000 for one woman whose burns were particularly severe.

The judges determined that the newspaper failed to fully test the recipe before publication, and that if readers followed the recipe exactly, the churros had a good chance of exploding once the oil reached the suggested temperature.

Days after the recipe was published in the paper’s “Woman” magazine in 2004, hospitals around the country began treating women for burns suffered when the dough boiling in oil suddenly shot out of kitchen pots.
 


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