A Boise police officer was driving behind Alofa Time's truck on a busy road when he noticed the man's erratic driving and then watched him slam into the car, said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower.

Time, who was not injured in the crash, told officers that he also was involved his wife's death, officials said.

An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time's cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said.

Time was being held on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Nina Murphy, 36, and her 4-year-old daughter Jae Lynne Grimes, both of Boise. Murphy's other daughter was injured and was in stable condition at a Boise hospital.

"It was one of the more horrific and complex crime scenes on memory," Hightower said. "A woman and her child killed in a crash, and a severed head from an earlier homicide: It's nothing short of bizarre and tragic."

In the first paper, Dr. Eduardo C. Alfonso and colleagues at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, report that their group treated 10 cases of soft contact lens-associated keratomycosis between 1969 and 1992. But between January 2004 and April 2006, they treated 34 cases attributed to Fusarium infection.

The average age of the patients was 34.9 years (range 13 to 92). Medical histories and evaluations failed to turn up any active disease that would predispose the patients to infectious ulceration.

Thirty-one patients (91 percent) were initially treated with antibiotics for presumed bacterial keratitis; four patients were treated with antiviral medications; and only two received antifungal therapy before the final diagnosis was made.

The average time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis was 9.1 days (range 0 to 140 days). At the initial examination, the size of the infiltrates ranged from 1 to 8 mm.

Once the fungus was identified, patients were usually treated with topical natamycin 5 percent and oral voriconazole 200 mg per day was prescribed to three patients. The length of treatment ranged from 21 to 138 days

One case required placement of tissue adhesive glue, and another required a surgical procedure. Most patients needed corneal scraping to remove dead tissue.

Alfonso's team cautions: "Based on the present report, ophthalmic clinicians should have a heightened clinical suspicion for possible Fusarium and other fungal pathogens as causative agents in cosmetic soft contact lens patients with ulcerative keratitis."

They note that cultures and microscopy are valuable diagnostic tools, and early treatment leads to rapid cure with good outcomes. They recommend a polyene antifungal agent, such as natamycin or amphotericin, applied every hour initially.

Meanwhile, in a small case series reported by Dr. David G. Hwang and associates at the University of California, San Francisco, there were four patients with contact lens-associated Fusarium keratitis during a 5-week span in early 2006. Previously, the department had treated eight cases of Fusarium keratitis between 1976 and 2005, only two of which were associated with contact lens use.

Three of the patients -- ages 19 to 24 years -- had no risk factors for fungal keratitis, whereas a fourth woman, 56 years old, was undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which may have lowered her resistance to infection.

Initially two of the patients were misdiagnosed with herpes-related keratitis and the other two with bacterial keratitis. One patient whose diagnosis was not made for at least 4 weeks after symptom onset ended up requiring corneal transplant surgery. Seven weeks later, her visual acuity was still poor.

The other three patients recovered with visual acuity of 20/40 or better after treatment with topical antifungal therapy.

In many of the cases, but not all, patients recalled having used Bausch and Lomb contact lens solutions, which have been pulled from the market.

Hwang's team adds that clusters of cases have been reported in other areas of the U.S. and in Singapore.