Man Becomes Trapped Between 2 Cars, Dies

Ira Kaye began the morning as he usually did, by backing his Chrysler Crossfire out of his Rockville garage to drive to the U.S. Treasury Department in the District, where he worked as a lawyer. Moments later, he was dead, killed in an accident that Montgomery County police are calling "truly a tragic set of circumstances."

Police said yesterday that Kaye, 45, stopped the car, apparently to check on something, but did not put it in park. As he was getting out, the car started moving toward his garage, said Lucille Baur, a police spokeswoman.

Kaye's open car door began scraping a Chevrolet Malibu parked in the driveway, Baur said, and he became trapped between the two cars.

The Chrysler continued to roll forward with the driver's door open, apparently dragging Kaye into the garage, where the door scraped a BMW sedan parked to the left. Kaye became trapped between the BMW and the Chrysler, Baur said. Rescue workers pronounced him dead in the garage. Investigators have not determined how fast Kaye's car was going, Baur said.

"He was caught between two cars, making it impossible for him to escape," Baur said. An autopsy will determine the cause of death.

Kaye served in top-level ethics positions for the federal government, most recently at Treasury. As a deputy assistant general counsel, he managed the department's ethics programs, which included financial disclosures and advice on issues. "He was just one of the nicest persons you could imagine dealing with," said Robert F. Hoyt, general counsel at Treasury.

At the Federal Trade Commission, where he worked earlier, his keen understanding of complicated ethics issues was "unsurpassed," employees were told in an internal tribute yesterday. At the same time, he could laugh at himself, styling some ethics training classes after game shows such as "Jeopardy!," friends and co-workers said.

Kaye grew up in New Jersey, going on to the University of Delaware, where he met Michael Lacey, who would become his partner.

The two moved to Washington in 1985, and Kaye attended George Washington University Law School. At parties, Lacey recalled, Kaye was the kind of person you might sit next to at the end of the night, speak with and say on the way home: "That guy was really interesting. Where was he all night?"

As Lacey and Kaye became interested in adopting a child, they envisioned a life in which the family would eat dinner every night together. The two traveled to Pennsylvania and had a table built by craftsmen who use 18th-century tools.

It was to be the centerpiece of their evenings, and after their son, Zachary, arrived from China about eight years ago, the couple made good on their promise. Even in recent years, with Kaye's high-level jobs, he would get home in time for dinner at 6:30 or 7 five nights a week.

Such was the case Wednesday night. He announced to Lacey and Zachary that the "Festival of Leftovers," which usually took place on Thursdays, would commence a night early.

Yesterday morning, he awoke early, as always, made coffee and left for work.

When Lacey awoke about 6:30 a.m., he noticed that the trash cans had not been moved to the curb, which Kaye would usually do on Thursdays. He saw Kaye's car in the garage and assumed he was still in the house. Lacey looked, couldn't find him and went back to the garage. There, he found his partner of 23 years lifeless between the two cars.

Lacey said he does not know what happened but said he thinks that Kaye had forgotten to put out the garbage cans, got out of his car to do so and, when the car started moving, tried to stop it and became trapped.

"It took a second for this thing to happen," Lacey said, "and our lives are changed forever."