Ex-Elmo puppeteer faces new sex-with-minor allegation

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The puppeteer formerly behind the “Sesame Street” character Elmo faces a new accusation of having sex with an underage boy, a week after a similar allegation prompted him to resign from the iconic public television children’s program.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a man identified only as John alleges Kevin Clash engaged in oral sex and other sex acts with him when John was 16 years old. The suit seeks at least $ 75,000 in damages.

The suit alleges the incident occurred in either 2000 or 2001 when John, who is from Florida, visited New York for modeling opportunities. John came to know Clash, then 40, through a telephone chat line for gays on which Clash claimed to be a 30-year-old named Craig, according to the suit.

John returned to New York when he turned 18, and he and Clash renewed the relationship, the lawsuit said.

“Mr. Clash believes the lawsuit has no merit,” Clash’s publicist, Risa B. Heller, said in an emailed statement.

It is the latest charge levied against Clash, now 52, who resigned on November 20 from Sesame Workshop, the company behind “Sesame Street,” after nearly 30 years on the show.

His resignation came the same day Cecil Singleton filed a claim seeking more than $ 5 million in damages from Clash. Singleton claims he met the then-32-year-old puppeteer in 1993 in a gay chat room when he was 15.

It added that on numerous occasions over a period of years Clash engaged in sexual activity with Singleton.

The newest allegation comes about two weeks after another man recanted his claims that Clash had sex with him when he was 16 years old. The man later said the relationship was consensual.

Clash had denied the allegations and acknowledged a past relationship with his first accuser. He added the pair were both consenting adults at the time.

The Elmo character debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1979, 10 years after the show premiered and introduced the now-iconic characters Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among others, to American children.

While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Cynthia Osterman)

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2012

Because of an editing error, a picture caption with an article on Tuesday about a girl who received a liver transplant during Hurricane Sandy misspelled the surname of the girl’s family. As the article correctly noted, it is Dreeland, not Vreeland.

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Grim recovery forecast for U.S., global economies

WASHINGTON — In a grim new forecast, a leading international economic group sharply cut its outlook for U.S. and global growth next year and warned that the debt crisis in Europe and fiscal policy risks in America could plunge the world back into recession.

As it stands now, the industrialized world is looking at a muted and uneven recovery over the next two years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Paris-based OECD projected gross domestic product across its 34 member nations — which include the U.S., Japan and the 17-nation Eurozone — to grow a sluggish 1.4% next year. That is down from 2.2% that the group had forecasted six months earlier.

Growth prospects in the U.S. also were slashed for next year. Experts at the OECD now see inflation-adjusted GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, rising 2% next year in the U.S., roughly equivalent to this year and down from its earlier forecast of an increase of 2.6%.

The new projections are all the more sobering in that they are based on assumptions that Europe's debt crisis won't get much worse and that the U.S. won't go over the so-called fiscal cliff — a combination of more than $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and federal spending cuts slated to begin at the start of next year.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"If key adverse risks cannot be averted, and especially if the Eurozone crisis were to intensify significantly, the likely outcome would be considerably weaker, potentially plunging the global economy into deep recession and deflation, with large additional rises in unemployment," the OECD said.

The report, released Tuesday, is on the pessimistic side.

Although economists widely agree on the recession risks in the event that the U.S. isn't able to solve the fiscal impasse, a number of experts now say that the U.S. and global economies could see considerably stronger growth next year if Washington can reach agreement on tax and spending policies that avoid a big fiscal contraction in 2013.

"The economy in the U.S. is really poised to grow," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, noting that GDP growth in the U.S. could surge to a solid 3.5% or higher next year if the budget issues are resolved.

The latest forecast from the Federal Reserve, compiled in mid-September, sees U.S. GDP increasing 2.5% to 3% next year.

Baumohl's reasons for greater optimism include a recovering housing market, improving job growth and healthier personal finances, all of which should help drive stronger consumer spending.

Total consumer debt, which has fallen for four years, dropped by $74 billion to $11.31 trillion in the third quarter from the previous quarter, and it is now down $1.37 trillion from the peak in September 2008, according to a report Tuesday from the New York Fed.

Reflecting these trends, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its latest survey showed consumer confidence at its highest level since early 2008, results similar to a survey by the University of Michigan.

American business sentiments, however, have been more cautious of late, and many companies have held back on making investments in recent months. But banks are generally in good shape, and big companies are sitting on mountains of cash and are expected to ramp up investments once the fiscal and tax pictures become clearer.

The OECD report nodded to these factors, but noted that the global recovery slowed markedly over the last year amid faltering confidence and weakening world trade, in part because of problems in the Eurozone, which contributed to an unexpectedly strong slowdown in developing countries such as China.

The 17-nation Eurozone will probably remain in recession well into next year, the OECD said.

Meanwhile, Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has fallen back into a downturn after a growth spurt last year aided by massive reconstruction spending following the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The Japanese economy is expected to move at a lumbering pace over the next two years.

The outlook for China, Brazil and India — three of the biggest developing economies, none of which is a member of the OECD — looks comparatively brighter:  Growth will probably accelerate next year and in 2014, with China, the world's second-largest economy, again leading the pack.

The OECD forecast sees China's GDP expanding 8.5% next year and nearly 9% in 2014 after slowing this year to about 7.5%.

Although far from immune from the troubles in the U.S. and Europe, which still account for much of the global demand for goods, China and other major emerging economies have more wherewithal to boost growth than their more-indebted developed counterparts by ramping up government spending and lowering interest rates.

The report notes that spending cuts throughout OECD member countries have taken a toll on economic growth, particularly in the Eurozone, where GDP growth for next year was slashed to -0.1% from a positive rate of 0.9%.

Many developed countries are now struggling with financial and economic challenges related to an aging population, large public debts and high unemployment.

Assuming Europe's debt crisis stabilizes, the Eurozone is forecast to recover in 2014. For OECD countries overall, GDP growth is projected to pick up in 2014 to 2.3%.

The U.S. economy is expected to outperform most other OECD nations in 2014, with its GDP stepping up to a more sturdy growth of 2.8%. That compares with the Fed's forecast of 3% to 3.8% growth in 2014.

Either way, U.S. economic growth isn't likely to come close to keeping up with the rapid advance of developing countries, notably China.

Last year, the U.S. accounted for 23% of the global economy, with the Eurozone and China tied for second, each with a 17% share each.

But by 2030, the OECD estimates, China's share of the global economy will rise to 28%, while the U.S. will slip to No. 2 with 18% of world GDP, and the Eurozone's share will fall to 12%.

don.lee@latimes.com

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Cops: Gang member killed, another wounded at funeral

Rev. Corey Brooks talks about shooting after a funeral in Chicago on Monday, November 26, 2012. (Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune)

Shots rang out, causing panic and chaos as hundreds of mourners were leaving a Catholic church on the South Side following funeral services Monday for a slain reputed gang member.

As people scattered for exits, a woman knocked Deborah Echols-Moore, 59, to the floor and fell atop her. Her shoes were thrown off her feet. When she stood back up, she fled barefoot out a door.

“When I came outside, you still can hear shooting. Boom! Boom! Boom! I still ran…people was running behind me,” the longtime CTA employee said not long after the 12:30 p.m. shooting. “You didn’t know which way to go or what to do. All I knew to do was run for my life.”

Chicago police said one man was killed, another critically injured in the bloodshed at St. Columbanus Church. Police identified both as Gangster Disciples members and convicted felons, illustrating once again the high risks of gang membership in a year in which rising homicides have brought Chicago unwanted national attention.

GDs alone make up more than a quarter of the city’s approximately 470 homicide victims. About 60 percent of this year’s homicide victims were gang members, according to department statistics.

Police were still investigating who was responsible for the shooting, but investigators said the neighborhood has long been rife with conflict between GDs and rival Black Disciples.

Illustrating the sudden, often unpredictable nature of the violence, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy just a couple of hours earlier was touting the department’s crime-fighting strategies in tamping down the city’s rate of violence since earlier in the year when homicides soared. Through Sunday, homicides have risen more than 19 percent over the same period a year earlier, department records show.

Rev. Corey Brooks, a well-known South Side pastor who officiated at Monday’s services for James Holman, 32, said a church would have been off-limits for gangbangers at one time.

“Now we are living at a day and time where these younger criminals have no regard for life or for street rules,” he said.

Holman, identified by police as a gang member, was gunned down last week at an apartment building in the Washington Park neighborhood.

The shooting took place just outside St. Columbanus, the same church where gangster Al Capone’s wife and mother attended mass daily more than half a century ago.

A Cook County Medical Examiner's spokesman identified one of the two victims as Sherman Miller, 21, and said he was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital. A 26-year-old man was shot in the back and listed as in “extremely critical condition,” a hospital spokesman said.

Miller, who is also identified in court records as William Miller, was on parole for being in possession of a stolen vehicle and escaping from police custody, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.

The surviving victim has a 2004 felony weapons conviction in his criminal background, court records show.

Police said two guns were recovered, one down the block from the church at East 71st Street and South Prairie Avenue and another on one of the victims.

About a dozen bullet casings littered the steps outside the church where yellow evidence markers were placed. Beat cops blocked off traffic with their squad cars and sealed off the church’s entrance with yellow and red tape. As evidence technicians took photos of the crime scene, detectives went door-to-door to nearby homes scouring for witnesses.

April Smith, 30, said she looked out a second-floor window of her home when she heard her car alarm sound off and noticed a man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans walking toward the church entrance on 71st Street. She then heard about a dozen gunshots and saw two passersby crouch for protection.

Moments later, the same man in the sweatshirt ran back onto Prairie and fled south, said Smith. Mourners then frantically exited the church.

“To know that something like that happened right across the street...it’s terrible,” Smith, who has lived at her home for seven years, said in disbelief. “It’s broad daylight.”

Brooks, who is pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood and is considering a run for former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s vacant congressional seat, said about 500 people attended the funeral, including about 50 children. The church was so crowded that people were standing in the back.

Brooks had finished the eulogy and Holman’s family and close friends had gone out the front door of the church when shots rang out.

“That's when all the gunfire broke out and it was just crazy,” Brooks said. “People were hollering and screaming and kids running everywhere.”

Charles Childs, a co-owner of the A.A. Rayner and Sons Funeral Home across the street from the church, held an uneventful visitation for Holman on Sunday. On Monday he said he saw the gunman firing his weapon as he came down the front steps outside the church.

“No place is safe,” he said. “It’s just despicable.”

Tribune reporter Naomi Nix contributed to this story.

jgorner@tribune.com
lford@tribune.com
csadovi@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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132 online counterfeit sites seized in Cyber Monday blitz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and European authorities seized 132 domain names in a counterfeit goods crackdown linked to Cyber Monday, the online bargain day, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

ICE agents seized 101 domain names in the United States and 31 were taken over by officers in Britain, Romania, Belgium, France and Denmark and by Europol, the European Police Office, ICE Director John Morton said.

The sites, many linked to organized crime, were selling fake goods that ranged from National Football League jerseys and Nike Inc shoes to Adobe Systems Inc software, he said.

“There is much money to be made out there duping consumers and that is what is going on,” Morton said on a conference call.

Investigations are ongoing and more sites will be seized in coming days.

In the United States, 41 rights owners’ merchandise was being sold on the seized sites, Morton said.

ICE said in a statement that one U.S. arrest had been made.

The crackdown marks the third year that ICE has targeted websites selling counterfeit goods on Cyber Monday, the online shopping spree. It is the first time the agency has carried out the operation with European police.

The Cyber Monday seizures raise the total number of U.S. sites taken over to 1,630 since ICE began its anti-counterfeit campaign in June 2010.

PayPal accounts identified with the sites and holding a total of more than $ 175,000 are being targeted for seizure, the ICE statement said.

Morton put the scale of online piracy in the billions of dollars. Much of the online counterfeiting is in China and other parts of Asia, and U.S. authorities are working with China on the problem, he said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Beyonce to direct documentary about herself for HBO

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop superstar Beyonce is stepping behind the camera to direct a behind-the-scenes documentary about her personal and professional life, U.S. cable channel HBO said on Monday.

The currently untitled film will debut on February 16 and show the Grammy-winning singer’s life in the recording studio, readying for live performances and running her own TV and music production company.

“Everybody knows Beyonce’s music, but few know Beyonce the person,” HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo said in a statement. “Along with electrifying footage of Beyonce on stage, this unique special looks beyond the glamour to reveal a vibrant, vulnerable, unforgettable woman.”

The documentary will also feature moments in the “Crazy in Love” singer’s family life and first-person footage Beyonce captured on her laptop.

Beyonce, 31, who is married to hip hop artist and mogul Jay-Z, will headline the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans on February 3.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

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Letters: Cycle of Birth and Death (1 Letter)

To the Editor:

Re “Amid Cosmic Fatigue, Scarcely a Star Is Born” (Out There, Nov. 20): Though one may bemoan the rapidly declining birthrate of stars, the inescapable fact is that everything ends. People live for about 80 years, but any one of us could die tomorrow. As for our species, a cosmic impact causing mass extinctions like that of the dinosaurs occurs every 100 million years or so, although we may extinguish ourselves long before that through war or by destroying our environment.

Our planet will be incinerated in about 5 billion years when our Sun, in its own death throes, becomes a red giant. And our Milky Way galaxy will collide and merge with Andromeda in 3 to 4 billion years. Even the universe itself will end in either fire or ice, depending on whether its expansion continues forever, causing a “big rip,” or is reversed, resulting in a “big crunch.”

Happy holidays!

Stephen A. Silver

San Francisco

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Holiday sales continue to soar on Cyber Monday

Web shopping soared on Cyber Monday, continuing a strong start to the holiday season.

Online sales were up 26.6 percent from last year by Monday evening, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks data from 500 retail sites. ComScore meanwhile, expected online sales to hit a record of about $1.5 billion by day's end.

Cyber Monday has become the biggest online shopping day in recent years as employees head back to the office but continue to cybershop for holiday gifts. The growth of smartphones and tablets has only increased that ability, an opportunity Web retailers have been eager to exploit.

This year, retailers aggressively pushed "Pre-Black Friday" promotions and flooded consumers with emails touting good deals in the days before Thanksgiving. As a result, the big shopping days of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have blurred into a sale-laden week.

Some retail analysts had worried that strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday would entice shoppers to buy earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.

"So far, that is not the case," said Jay Henderson, the strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce. "Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season."

Sales across Amazon.com, the largest online retailer, had risen 52 percent from the previous year by midmorning Monday, according to ChannelAdvisor, which offers services to third-party sellers on e-commerce sites. Meanwhile, eBay sales volume increased 57 percent, the firm said.

The average online order size on Cyber Monday was $130.30. That was down from almost $200 during the whole of Cyber Monday last year, according to IBM.

But Monday's discounts on the websites of bricks -and-mortar retailers weren't necessarily as broad or as deep as consumers could find if they shopped in the days before, according to Michael Brim, founder of deal site BFAds.net. "We're not seeing across the board the lowest prices like we do on Black Friday or Thanksgiving," he said. "It's better than the average weekly sales, but it's not on the level of Black Friday … yet," he said.

Most retailers — about 97 percent — were expected to offer Cyber Monday deals this year, up from 90 percent last year, according to the National Retail Federation. That means good deals were there for the finding on sites that might not normally have sales, Brim said.

Laptops and apparel at specialty sites were popular items Monday, Brim said.

Amazon offered $30 off its 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet, which usually sells for $159. The deal was available only on Cyber Monday.

Hoffman Estates-based retailer Sears said it found that a number of its shoppers opted to buy online and pick up merchandise in the store, according to spokesman Tom Aiello, who declined to say whether online traffic increased Monday. Shoppers want "to save on shipping, or they want to touch it — and get it the same day and make sure they've got that gift in their hands," he said.

Tribune news services contributed.

crshropshire@tribune.com

Twitter @corilyns

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Pfleger points police to suspect in fatal stabbing

During an argument with his wife Wednesday, Demetrius Jackson allegedly stabbed to death a 55-year-old man who intervened, then called St. Sabina Catholic Church to pray with the Rev. Michael Pfleger.

Shortly after a Cook County judge ordered Jackson, 32, held without bond on Sunday on a charge of first-degree murder, Pfleger, reached by phone, recounted the conversation he had with Jackson on Friday, a day before he turned himself in.

"He told me the guy who he allegedly stabbed is his best friend," Pfleger said. "He said (the victim) punched him in the face. He told me he just reacted. He asked me to pray with him, and I prayed with him."

Jackson, who lives in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, hung his head in Cook County Bond Court as a judge said he faced a murder charge in the death of William Terry of the 10300 block of South Forest Avenue.

Jackson and his wife were arguing in their home, also in the 10300 block of South Forest, Wednesday night when he allegedly grabbed a knife and threatened to kill her, prosecutors said. The wife fled to Terry's home and called 911, prosecutors said.

Before police arrived, Jackson's wife and Terry decided to walk back to Jackson's home. Still holding a knife, Jackson confronted the two outside and continued to berate his wife, authorities said. Terry stepped between them, "trying to calm" the defendant, Assistant State's Attorney Brad Dickey said. Terry fell to the ground, and Jackson leapt on top of him, stabbing him multiple times in front of several witnesses, authorities said.

"Terry was able to stagger to his home," Dickey said. Gasping for breath, he collapsed on his front porch. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn shortly after 8 p.m. and pronounced dead, according to police. Other county officials said Terry lived in Riverdale.

Jackson, who appears to have no criminal record, worked with St. Sabina on the Safe Passage project, public defender Stephen Herczeg said. A Chicago Public Schools program, Safe Passage employs community members to help improve safety by standing guard along the routes children travel to schools.

When the two spoke, Pfleger encouraged Jackson to turn himself in to police.

"I told him, 'I'm not a court or a lawyer or a judge,'" Pfleger said. "I told him I wouldn't judge him. I just encouraged him to turn himself in and not run. A lot of times, people are afraid to go to the police directly. I said I would try to set it up."

When Jackson agreed, Pfleger said he called police at the Gresham District, telling them of Jackson's intentions.

As promised, Jackson showed up at a police station Friday morning and gave a video-taped confession, according to court documents.

"Thank God it worked," said Pfleger. "It's very sad. I feel bad about the man who got killed, too. It's a loss of two lives."

efmeyer@tribune.com

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Grammy-winning bassist injured in Swiss bus crash

GENEVA (AP) — Grammy-winning jazz bassist Marcus Miller and several members of his band were injured when their bus overturned Sunday on a busy highway in Switzerland, killing the driver, police said.

The German-registered private bus tipped over as it drove into a bend on the A2 highway in central Switzerland and came to a rest on its side, police in the canton (state) of Uri said. The bus was carrying 13 people — two drivers and 11 members of the Marcus Miller Band, including Miller.

Over his career, the bassist has worked with jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Wayne Shorter, according to his website. He won two Grammys, his first coming in 1991 for Best Rhythm & Blues Song (“Power of Love”) along with Luther Vandross and Teddy Vann, and the second came in 2001 for Best Contemporary Jazz Album (“M2″).

The band was on its way from Monte Carlo to the Dutch town of Hengelo, the next stop on the American band’s tour, where it was due to perform Monday.

The driver who was at the wheel at the time of the accident sustained fatal injuries. Police spokesman Karl Egli said the 12 passengers were injured and taken to hospitals, but none had life-threatening injuries.

Miller was discharged from the hospital later Sunday, as were fellow band members Alex Han and Kris Bowers, but some other band and crew members were being kept in hospitals overnight, according to a post on Miller’s official Facebook page.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. Police believe no other vehicles were involved.

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