Milestones

By Kathleen Adams, Melissa August, Randy Hartwell, Ellin Martens, Joseph Pierro and Sora Song

ARRESTED. DARRYL STRAWBERRY, 39, ex-Mets and ex-Yankees slugger; for violating probation for the fourth time for a 1999 drug and prostitution-solicitation conviction; in Tampa, Fla. Strawberry fled a rehab center and said he was picked up for an A.A. meeting by an addict with whom he smoked crack and was robbed of jewelry by five gunmen.

CONVICTED. AHMED RUSSAM, 33, an Algerian national, for plotting to bomb sites in the U.S., maybe during Y2K festivities; in Los Angeles. Russam was also sentenced to five years by a French court for membership in a radical Islamic group.

SENTENCED. PERRY WACKER, 33, the Dutch driver in whose truck 58 Chinese illegal immigrants suffocated last June; to 14 years for manslaughter; in England. Ying Guo, 30, a translator, received six years for conspiracy in the same case.

DIED. TRINH CONG SON, 62, wispy but uncompromising singer-songwriter whom Joan Baez called "the Bob Dylan of Vietnam"; of diabetes; in Ho Chi Minh City.

DIED. ANN LEYBOURNE BIEBEL, 53, retired Chicago cop who, as an off-duty recruit, shot and killed the city's infamous "Friday-night rapist" when he kidnapped her at gunpoint on New Year's Day in 1973; of cancer; in Muskegon, Mich.

DIED. JOHN OAKES, 87, crusading editorial-page writer and editor of the New York Times, whose passionate defense of human rights and the environment and early opposition to the war in Vietnam led to his dismissal as editor of the editorial page by his cousin the publisher but helped to establish the Times's liberal voice; on April 5, following a stroke last month; in Manhattan.

DIED. CLIFFORD SHULL, 85, M.I.T. professor whose citation for the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics said "he helped answer the question of where atoms are"; in Medford, Mass. He developed a technique to study the atomic structure of materials by bouncing streams of neutrons off them.

DIED. ED (BIG DADDY) ROTH, 69, dotty hot-rodder whose cartoon alter ego, "Rat Fink," glared at convention and Mickey Mouse; of a heart attack; in Manti, Utah. He was called "the most capricious" of car customizers by Tom Wolfe.

DIED. HENRY BROWN, 93, chemist who discovered that sulfurous organic compounds could make chrome more brilliant; in Palo Alto, Calif. His innovation produced shinier faucets, sparklier bumpers and brighter pennies.

DIED. "BROTHER" THEODORE GOTTLEIB, 94, deadpan performer of what he called "stand-up tragedy"; in Manhattan. In wartime Europe, Gottleib was carted to Dachau but used his family's money to buy his freedom from the Nazis and was assisted to California by Albert Einstein, reputedly his mother's boyfriend. A sort of West Coast Will Hunting, Gottleib worked as a janitor at Stanford, where he simultaneously beat 30 professors at chess. After his nightclub and TV appearances in the 1950s and '60s waned, he resurfaced on Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s.