Darren ‘Bo’ Taylor, gang peace broker

Darren “Bo” Taylor, a former member of the Crips who brokered a truce between warring inner-city gangs after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, has died. He was 42.

Taylor died Monday of cancer in San Diego, his sister, Adrienne Galloway, said Wednesday.

He was a member of the Crips gang as a teenager but became a gang peace activist after the riots.

“You don’t find many in the gang-intervention world who can be effective in the street, effective in the courtroom, effective at City Hall and effective in the prisons,” said civil rights attorney Connie Rice. “He could calm everyone down and make us work together.”

DES MOINES, Iowa

James Hoyt, Nazi camp liberator

James Hoyt, one of four U.S. soldiers who discovered the Buchenwald concentration camp as World War II neared its end, has died.

Hoyt’s wife, Doris, said he died Monday in his sleep at home in rural Oxford. He was 83.

Hoyt served in the Army’s 6th Armored Division during World War II, earning a Bronze Star. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest battle fought by American troops in World War II.

Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps established by Nazi Germany, was liberated in April 1945. It is estimated that 56,000 prisoners lost their lives at Buchenwald between 1937 and 1945.

“There were thousands of bodies piled high,” Hoyt said in a 2005 interview. “I saw hearts that had been taken from live people in medical experiments. … Seeing these things, it changes you.”

KINGSTON, Jamaica

Johnny Moore, ska trumpeter

Johnny Moore, a trumpeter and founding member of the pioneering Jamaican ska and reggae band The Skatalites, died of cancer on Saturday. He was 70.

Moore died at a friend’s house after being released from the hospital following cancer treatment last week, music promoter Herbie Miller said.

Moore helped form the band in 1964 along with saxophonists Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso and trombonist Don Drummond.

“He was the most creative of the trumpeters from the ska period,” Miller said. “He was always willing to try different things.”

During the first 14 months the band was together, it transformed jazz, movie themes and other genres of music with ska style. It broke up in the 1960s, but regrouped in New York two decades later.

From wire reports