Passages

Bad-boy actor Charlie Sheen, 29, who once called himself “the consummate bachelor” and proved it by hanging out with Kato Kaelin and Heidi Fleiss, announced his engagement to model Donna Peele, 25, on April 27. The two met some six weeks earlier, while filming a cigarette ad for Japanese TV Though never married, Sheen was engaged to Kelly Preston (now wed to John Travolta) in 1990. He has a daughter, Cassandra, 10, from another relationship. No wedding date has been set.

Actor Don Brockett, 65, who had been rolling out dough and whipping up entrees as Chef Brockett on TV’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood since 1967, died on May 2 in Pittsburgh of a heart attack. His film roles included playing a prisoner in Hannibal Lecter’s cell block in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)….

Author and former British intelligence official Peter Wright, 78, whose best-selling 1987 exposé, Spycatcher, claimed KGB moles had occupied high British intelligence posts, died of pneumonia on April 27 at his home in Australia….

Counterculture clothing designer Holly Harp, 55, who dressed rock icons Janis Joplin and Grace Slick in tie-dye and fringe, died on April 24 in L.A. of cancer. Though best remembered for her ’60s-era hip-huggers and painted jerseys, Harp had success in recent years designing elegant, formfitting evening dresses.

After allegedly taking part in a brawl at an Orlando nightclub and then, say police, urinating in the back seat of a cop car, singer Bobby Brown, 26, was charged with felony aggravated assault and disorderly conduct on April 26. Witnesses told police that Brown, his bodyguard and an associate kicked and punched bar patron Neil Kelly, 37, after Kelly tried to talk to a woman with whom Brown was speaking. (Brown told police only one punch was thrown, by his bodyguard.) Brown, out on $5,000 bail, faces a yet-to-be-set court date. Brown’s wife, Whitney Houston, was touring in Asia at the time….

Actor Sasha Mitchell, 27, who plays Step by Step’s resident numbskull, Cody, pleaded not guilty on April 28 in Ventura, Calif., to misdemeanor charges that he beat his wife, Jeanette, 28, who was two months pregnant. She told police her husband had slapped and kicked her on April 21. Mitchell, who denies the allegations, faces trial on June 7….

A Manhattan supreme court judge on May 1 threw out a jury’s finding that Libby Zion, 18, daughter of writer Sidney Zion, was partly responsible for her own death in 1984 at New York Hospital because of her use of cocaine (PEOPLE, Feb. 20). Justice Elliott Wilk, however, also halved the jury’s wrongful death award to the Zion family from $750,000 to $375,000. Libby was admitted to the hospital on March 4, 1984, with an earache and a fever, was treated with a sedative and died of cardiopulmonary collapse the next day. Back in February, the jury found the hospital’s doctors partly responsible for her death.

Extreme’s James Brollin, 54, and his wife, WKRP in Cincinnati’s Jan Smithers, 45, are splitting. She filed for divorce in L.A. superior court on April 26, citing irreconcilable differences. The two married in 1986 and have a daughter, Molly Elizabeth, 7.