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Monday, April 23, 2007

David Halberstam Killed

From the San Francisco Chronicle:


Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam was killed today in a fiery three-car accident in Menlo Park, authorities said.

Halberstam, 73, of New York, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided as it was making a left turn off the Bayfront Expressway, the approach road to the Dumbarton Bridge, onto Willow Road about 10:35 a.m., authorities said.

The car in which Halberstam was riding, a Toyota Camry driven by a UC Berkeley journalism graduate student, was hit by a late model Infiniti. When paramedics and fire crews arrived, they found Halberstam unresponsive and trapped in the front passenger seat, said Harold Schapelhouman, chief of the Menlo Park Fire District.

The engine compartment was on fire and the passenger side of the car had been crushed, Schapelhouman said.

One rescue crew was able to pull Halberstam from the car while another doused the flames, the chief said. The author had no pulse and was not breathing when he was freed, and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful, Schapelhouman said. Halberstam was pronounced dead at the scene.

A silver Nissan coupe suffered what appeared to be "collateral damage," and the female driver of that car was not seriously injured, the chief said.

The two other drivers were taken to the hospital with injuries, police said. The graduate student driving the Camry reportedly suffered a punctured lung. The extent of the Infiniti driver's injuries was unknown.

Halberstam had been in the Bay Area to deliver a speech at UC Berkeley titled, "Turning Journalism Into History," and had been on his way to do an interview for his next book, Orville Schell, the dean at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism, wrote in an e-mail.

Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 at age 30 for his reporting from Vietnam. He later turned to long-form writing and wrote 21 books, including "The Best and the Brightest," about how the United States became involved in Vietnam. His other works covered a wide range of subjects, including civil rights, sports and the auto industry.