Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Tim Blair, Tam Gray, Lina Lofaro, Eric Silver, David Spitz, Joel Stein, Flora Tartakovsky and Chris Taylor

INDICTED. SEAN CARROLL, 35, EDWARD MCMELLON, 26, KENNETH BOSS, 27 and RICHARD MURPHY, 26, New York City police officers who fired 41 shots at unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo last month, setting off a storm of protests; on charges of second-degree murder; in the Bronx, New York City.

SUSPENDED. GREGORY DELL, 53, Methodist minister who officiated at the marriage of two gay men in Chicago last September; for disobedience; in a 10-to-3 vote by a jury of pastors; in Downers Grove, Ill. The church toughened its position against same-sex marriages after a minister charged with blessing a lesbian union was acquitted last year.

RECOVERING. JOHNNY CARSON, 73, former Tonight show host and comedic icon; from a heart attack for which he had successful quadruple-bypass surgery; in Los Angeles.

DIED. MICHAEL ARIS, 53, husband of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leading dissident of Myanmar, formerly Burma; of prostate cancer; in Oxford. Myanmar's military junta refused to allow the dying Aris to visit his wife, whom he had not seen since 1995. Fearful the junta would bar her return, she chose not to leave her country.

DIED. CAL RIPKEN SR., 63, sharp-tongued veteran baseball manager and the only coach to have managed two of his sons, Cal Jr. and Billy, on the same team; of lung cancer; in Aberdeen, Md. Ripken spent 36 years with the Baltimore Orioles in both the minor and major leagues. "There are two things I always say you have to do in baseball," he said. "Adjust and readjust."

DIED. HENRY GRAHAM, 82, even-keeled former National Guard general who helped control some of the country's most explosive civil rights battles; of Parkinson's disease; in Birmingham, Ala. On June 11, 1963, Graham told George Wallace to step aside when the Alabama Governor stood in the entrance to a University of Alabama building, trying to prevent the school's desegregation (see Eulogy).

DIED. DAVID STRICKLAND, 29, film and TV actor who played a music critic on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan and has a role in the current release Forces of Nature; of an apparent suicide; in Las Vegas. Strickland, who was due to appear in court last week as part of his probation for an October cocaine-possession arrest, was found hanged in a motel room.

ASSASSINATED. LUIS ARGANA, 66, Vice President of Paraguay; by several gunmen who sprayed his Jeep with bullets and a grenade as it rode through a street in Asuncion, the capital. Supporters of Argana, the leader of an effort to oust President Raul Cubas, blamed Cubas for the killing. Members of parliament immediately voted to begin impeachment proceedings against the President.

DIED. ROY JOHNSON, 93, U.S. Navy admiral who oversaw what the government said was retaliatory U.S. attacks against North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, an episode that escalated American involvement in Vietnam; in Virginia Beach, Va. Some scholars suggest that President Lyndon Johnson, under fire for not acting aggressively in Vietnam, invented the scenario of unprovoked attacks from North Vietnam to justify deeper U.S. engagement.