PITTSBURGH — A jury awarded $1.2 million to a couple whose daughter was killed five years ago when an amusement park roof broke loose during a storm.

The Allegheny County Common Pleas Court jury issued its verdict Friday in the case over the death of Stephanie Wilkerson, 29, of Monroeville, who was killed May 31, 2002, during the storm at Kennywood Park.

Strong winds toppled a pavilion housing The Whip ride, and Wilkerson was struck by the collapsing roof and pinned against a metal fence.

At trial, Helen and Sylvester Wilkerson testified about the loss and grief they have endured after losing their daughter, who lived at home with them. They declined to comment after the verdict.

Jurors awarded money to compensate for lost future wages, services and for the loss of "comfort and society" but did not award damages for pain and suffering on the part of the deceased.

Kennywood attorney David B. White called the case "a terrible tragedy for the Wilkersons" but an accident. He said he considered the verdict appropriate.

Family attorney Thomas R. Kline said the pavilion was built with posts that did not meet the building code.

PITTSBURGH — An animal rights group protested outside the church of Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato on Sunday over the recent killing of 272 geese at the county's largest park.But Onorato wasn't there — he was vacationing with his family in Italy.Voices for Animals organized the event at Saint Cyril of Alexandria Church in Brighton Heights because Onorato reneged on a verbal agreement with officials at North Park in May, according to the group's coordinator, Lindsay Zurosky."We're basically here to shame him for lying to us and killing the geese, to alert his fellow parishioners to the moral hypocrisy," Zurosky told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.Several parishioners defended Onorato and his character.County officials said earlier they tried for 10 years to decrease the Canada geese population at North Park through scare devices, habitat modifications, nest and egg treatments, no-feeding policies and public education.But the tactics failed and the population grew to about 700 as of May, as did complaints about the birds and their droppings.So the county, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rounded up 272 of the geese earlier this month and euthanized them with gas.

PITTSBURGH — Representatives of the Libertarian Party visited Pittsburgh over the weekend to check out the city as a possible location for the party's national convention in 2010 or 2012.Members of the party's national committee said the gathering could bring as many as 1,000 people to the city.Jim Lark, a regional Libertarian Party representative and professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, said Pittsburgh had "a lot of good features.""When conventioneers come to a city, they want things for their spouses and children to do," he said. "Pittsburgh has a lot of things to do."