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Updated at the bottom with a suspect targeted for arrest. First posted at 8:03 a.m. Monday.

A USC honor's student was killed in a two-car crash on St. Patrick's Day.

Police said 22-year-old Xinhai Huangel was killed in a 2:55 a.m crash about five miles southwest of campus in South L.A.

The collision happened at ...

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Google Maps

A pickup truck careened onto a downtown sidewalk on a busy afternoon along Broadway, killing a woman and injuring six others, authorities said.

The accident outside Casa India Mexican restaurant at 348 S. Broadway was first reported by the L.A. Fire Department at 1:04 p.m. Sunday.

The deceased was identified only as ...

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L.A. Weekly Managing Editor Jill Stewart will make an appearance on KCET's SoCal Connected tonight to talk about the city's shocking hit-and-run epidemic with host Val Zavala and special contributor Madeleine Brand.

The program airs at 7 p.m. and will delve into the facts in last week's cover story, authored by Simone Wilson: Namely, that an incredible 48 percent of crashes in Los Angeles were hit-and-runs. Yet the Los Angeles Police Department has done little to address the problem in a systemic way -- and, in fact, often fails to investigate even those cases with evidence left at the crash scene. We highly recommend you tune in.

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Thanksgiving Week turned tragic in Los Angeles when a callous hit-and-run driver ran down Lina Andrade, 62, sending her flying 70 feet in a dense residential area of Westlake, then circling back to take a look before fleeing the scene, LAPD says.

"It was a horrible thing, with this driver going back around to the scene slowly to take a look -- and witnesses realized it was the same car, they saw the shattered windshield," says Officer Jeffrey Fischer. But because eyewitnesses who tried to help were so horrified, Fischer says, none got a license plate. Police are scouring Elden Street near Olympic Boulevard for video. A city Victim Assistance program will help send Andrade's body home to Mexico. Fischer tersely explains: "He put his brakes on only after hitting her. She was in a crosswalk. He had to be going fast, right through the stop sign."

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CBS2

The victim's apparent driver's license photo

A 69-year-old man driving south on Crenshaw Boulevard just after 2 a.m. this morning crashed into a horse that was weaving through lanes near Palos Verdes Drive North, says the California Highway Patrol.

The coroner has since identified the driver, who was pronounced dead soon after at Torrance Memorial Hospital, as Rancho Palos Verdes resident Ryan Yonny Koyama.

CHP Officer John Tye says that in his 22 years at the department...

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@ink2flashyy via Twitter

McKiness Tweeted that he was "by the ave... going 120" before he died.

A young Southern California rapper who went by the names of "Jew'elz" and "Inkyy" has been identified as one of five men in their early 20s who died in a suspected drunk-driving crash on Labor Day weekend.

The San Bernardino Sun reports that Erwin McKiness, 21, Tweeted the ironic and foreshadowing phrase "YOLO" -- or "You Only Live Once," popularized by Canadian rapper Drake -- just before he and his friends died in what police believe to be an alcohol-related accident on Sunday, September 2.

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Shmelnik / Facebook

See correction at the bottom.

One of three young people who died in a fiery crash over the weekend was identified in reports as Jason Shmelnik, a 21 25-year-old who had performed as a youth on Dancing With the Stars' "Champion Kids" competition in 2007.

He was not driving when the BMW he was in careened out of control, reportedly hit trees and parking meters and ultimately severed a gas line as it smashed into Reno's Pizzeria on Ventura Boulevard in a fiery crash:

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Carlos Salas via Facebook

Tragedy struck the seaside town of Laguna Niguel in the wee hours this morning, when friends tell the local Patch that 20-year-old Carlos Salas was killed just 400 feet from his house.

Orange County Sheriff's investigators say the young victim was skateboarding home from a friend's place around 3:48 a.m. when black 1998 Nissan Maxima plowed into him, dragging him southbound along Golden Lantern ...

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Google Maps

A mother and her children, ages 4 and 8, died when an SUV going the wrong way in traffic crashed into the woman's minivan and sent it careening into a light pole in Hollywood this morning, authorities said.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott stated that the tragic collision was reported about 7:23 a.m. near 860 N. Highland Ave., which is where the street crosses Willoughby Avenue.

Here's what we know about it:

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Tea Tihanyi via Twiiter

Michael Vega, 25.

Not even a bike helmet could save 25-year-old Michael Ray Vega, the Norco resident killed in Rancho Cucamonga yesterday evening by a hit-and-run driver who left him to die along Foothill Boulevard.

"You were a great dude," his friend Lacey LeBlanc wrote on Twitter. "No one deserves the fate you received."

According to San Bernardino Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Jody Miller, the victim was riding his bicycle west on Foothill when, around 7:40 p.m., he was hit from behind...

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@LilBritt_Britt via Twitter

Irma Zamora died for a good deed.

Repeated attempts to lend a hand at a hectic accident scene in the San Fernando Valley went south last night, City News Service reports.

After a big white Chevy SUV lost control while trying to make a turn at Magnolia Boulevard around 8:25 p.m. -- knocking over a street lamp, downing power lines, shearing off a fire hydrant and landing on someone's front lawn in the Valley Village neighborhood -- witnesses rushed to assist its occupants. Unfortunately, though, electrical currents had begun rippling through the hydrant puddle...

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Transport with caution.

This out-of-control heat wave, combined with our usual traffic mayhem, has made it hard out there for a pool guy on the streets of L.A.:

Brian Humphrey of the L.A. City Fire Department says that over the last week, two separate car crashes involving pool-service vehicles have resulted in dangerous chemical spills along Ventura Boulevard.

The first occurred last Friday, shutting down Ventura in both directions. And the second...

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KTLA

Traffic mayhem on Venice Boulevard.

A Metro bus was involved in a dramatic three-vehicle crash near downtown Culver City around 5:45 p.m., according to the L.A. City Fire Department.

"Holy shit!" Tweeted L.A. resident Victor Flores. "Just seen some dude cause an accident then drive into a bus." KTLA footage showed the nose of a shiny black SUV crumpled into the left side of a two-segment city bus.

Initial reports from the scene indicated that 16 people were hurt, one of them seriously...

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Erin Galligan via Facebook

The victim in Bali last year.

A 30-year-old bicyclist who lived in Venice and worked at Craig's restaurant in West Hollywood was killed by a hit-and-run driver late Tuesday night.

Erin Galligan was riding southbound along the right side PCH around 11:15 p.m. when -- according to Santa Monica police -- she swerved into the middle of the nearest lane, where she was struck by a huge white pickup truck. Galligan was thrown so far that investigators reportedly had to search for her body along the side of the highway.

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Encyclopedia Metallum

Anarchy in Studio City.

TMZ reported this morning that 46-year-old punk singer Karim Chmielinski -- better known as Casey Chaos, frontman and founder of the hardcore L.A. group Amen -- "allegedly smashed his SUV into as many as 15 parked cars" on a "drunken demolition derby" to his Studio City home last night.

LAPD Sgt. Larry Jones says it was actually more like three cars, and that the number 15 was probably picked up from an "initial radio broadcast" resulting from "multiple people calling in at the same time."

But that's a testament to the absolute racket this punk allegedly caused...

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CAUTION: Side effects may include loss of cabinet-level positions.

Earlier this afternoon the Los Angeles District Attorney's office announced it would not be pursuing hit and run charges against Obama's former Secretary of Commerce, John Bryson. Bryson hit two cars three times in a span of ten minutes in San Gabriel on June 9.

Bryson tested negative for alcohol and controlled substances following the string of car accidents, but tests did show the presence of the prescription sleeping Ambien in his system. The report did not specify whether or not Bryson had a prescription for the drug.

In addition to being Tiger Wood's favorite sex drug, Ambien has long been associated with episodes of amnesia. Users have reported sleep-walking, sleep-eating, sleep-sexing, sleep-shoplifting, and sleep-driving--with no memory of the events.

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U.S. Deptartment of State

Just weeks after John Bryson quietly tendered his resignation from Obama's cabinet, the Los Angeles district attorney has declined to press charges against the ex-commerce secretary.

"The District Attorney's Office has declined to file a case against former Secretary of Commerce John Bryon," Sandi Gibbons of the District Attorney's office said in a statement released this afternoon.

Bryson, the well-connected founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former head of Edison International, resigned from the Commerce Department's top post on June 20, 11 days after he was involved in a bizarre double hit-and-run in San Gabriel.

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Slifer's work runs the gamut from "Transformers" to "My Little Pony Tales."

Another tragic hit-and-run in Santa Monica last weekend has left comic-book great Roger Slifer, 57, in critical condition.

The legend behind DC Comics superhero Lobo and the beloved old TV show Transformers was crossing 5th Street at the Colorado Avenue intersection around 12:57 a.m. early Saturday morning when he was plowed down by a white sedan with tinted windows, police say.

After breezing through the crosswalk...

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Facebook

Corleto, right, with her boyfriend, who was driving.

A Pacoima teenager who friends say was pregnant died yesterday morning when her boyfriend veered into oncoming traffic.

Dana Corleto, 19, was riding in the passenger's seat of a silver VW Passat when Jesus Felix, her 18-year-old boyfriend, reportedly lost control of the vehicle, crossed over the center margin and smashed head-on into a pickup truck traveling the opposite direction.

By last night, says LAPD Officer Daniel Menesez, Felix had been arrested.

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http://uruguay.usembassy.gov/

U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson will be taking a leave of absence from his post while doctors attempt to ascertain the cause of seizures that the former head of Edison International and founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council sustained on Saturday.

The Weekly has learned that Bryson, who passed a breathalyzer administered by cops, may then have been admitted to Huntington Hospital where his wife, Louise Bryson, has major pull--and where he could have received special consideration.
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