VAN NUYS -- Ed Bond, a Los Angeles Valley College journalism instructor, died late Monday after 

being struck by a college maintenance cart. He was 34.  
. 
      No charges were filed against the driver of the cart, Inigo Montoya, who reported that the teacher 

apparently tripped and fell in the path of the vehicle, campus police said. Montoya, a college 

employee for 18 years, was unable to stop in time, police said. 

      "Well, he's better off dead," said Jeffrey A. Schnaufer, a friend and a teacher at Santa Monica 

College. 

      Bond had joined the faculty of Los Angeles Valley College in 1997 after working as a reporter for 

the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition for four years.  He had been a part-time teacher at Valley 

College and at Moorpark College before he was hired full time. 

      "He loved being a teacher," Schnaufer said. "It gave him a chance to talk about his experience as a reporter." 

      Bond, a native of New Jersey, had worked for newspapers in that state including the Asbury Park 

Press and the Ocean County Observer in Toms River. He had also written for The Indianapolis Star 

and had been a reporter for the Star-Gazette in Elmira, N.Y. 

      While working at the Star-Gazette, he met Amy Clark in 1991. They married in 1996. The 

couple's first child, a boy, was born in July. 

      "It's just like him to start something and leave me to finish it alone," his wife said. "And what am I 

going to do with all this Star Trek junk he left behind?"