For the fourth time in less than a week, someone riding a bicycle has been killed by a motorist in Southern California.
And for the third time, the victim was murdered by a hit-and-run driver. Because that’s the right way to describe a conscious decision to leave someone to die in the street, even if the law doesn’t agree.
According to the Lake Elsinore-Wildomar edition of Patch, the victim was riding in Homeland, California shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday when he was run over and killed by a heartless coward who fled the scene without stopping.
And no, I never heard of Homeland before, either.
The victim, identified as 45-year old Homeland resident Juan Holguin, was riding his bike on Leon Road at Queen Palm Drive when the driver of a Gray Mazda 3 plowed into him at an unknown speed, and apparently an unknown direction.
Witnesses immediately reported Holguin down in the roadway, and he was taken to Riverside University Medical Center in Moreno Valley, where he died four hours later.
The suspect vehicle was found abandoned in a dirt alley approximately one-and-a-half miles from the crash scene with “damage consistent with the reported collision,” according to a CHP spokesperson, including visible “damage to the passenger side of the front windshield.”
There is a 35 mph speed limit on Leon Road, but the straight, wide-open roadway, just half block south of California Highway 74, is engineered to encourage speeding.
Anyone with information is urged to call the CHP Temecula office at 951/466-4300.
This is at least the 52nd bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the sixth in Riverside County — the second in the county in just three-and-a-half days.
At least 17 of those SoCal deaths this year have been hit-and-runs.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Juan Holguin and all of his loved ones.
I guess we’re going to ease back into this slowly.
I’m apparently still affected by the adverse reaction to the Moderna covid and flu shots last week. I had hoped to play catch-up today, and cover most if not all of what we missed last week.
But after falling asleep mid-sentence and running my laptop battery down to zero, it’s clear that I still don’t have my strength back — something I discovered after thinking I was okay on Saturday and nearly passing out at a WeHo dog event.
But at least I got to see a nice bakfiets someone rode to the dog park. Even the corgi stopped to check it out.
Due to the resulting time constraints, I’m going to be an asshole today and not take the time to look up who sent me what. So thank you for sending me stuff, even if I don’t credit you individually.
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I promised someone last week, before everything went to hell, that I would look into the death of man killed by a driver while riding an ebike in Arleta early in the morning of Sunday, September 13th.
A crowdfunding campaign posted by his brother has raised over $17,000 of the $20,000 goal to help pay for funeral expenses, describing in heartbreaking detail how much he loved, and was loved.
However, as we have discussed before, it’s difficult to determine whether a fallen ebike rider was on an electric bicycle or an electric motorcycle, since the police and the media can’t seem to tell one from another. And while any death is tragic, only the former are the subject of this site.
So unless I know for certain that the victim of a crash was riding a ped-assist bicycle, and not some other form of two-wheeled electric conveyance, I’m not including them in the already too high count of SoCal bicycling deaths.
And yes, even one is one too many.
So while my heart goes out to the family and loved ones of Oscar Adrian Lazaro, I won’t be adding his name to a 51 others who have lost their lives riding a bicycle in our deadly corner of the country.
But if anyone can convince me he was on a legal Class 1, 2 or 3 ebike, I’m more than willing to reconsider.
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Gracias por nada, Los Angeles.
Or rather, thanks for a whole 2.2 miles of new bike lanes installed in the last fiscal year, from June 2025 to June 2026. Except that’s lane miles — i.e., counting each side of the roadway separately — so we’re really talking about a whole one and one-tenth mile of net new bike lanes.
Streetsblog’sJoe Linton wrote earlier this month that the City of Los Angeles, not to be confused with the other 87 cities and various unincorporated areas that make up LA County, built a whopping 7.5 miles of new bike lanes. But at the same time, the city removed 5.3 miles of already existing bike lanes, resulting in the wholly underwhelming 2.2-mile net total.
They also improved a whole 14.1 miles of existing bike lanes, which usually translates to adding a row white plastic bendie posts and calling it protected, as if those wands will somehow magically ward off a couple tons of ballistic steel and glass.
Which is like trading the family cow for a handful of magic beans. I mean, your family does have a cow, right?
And people wonder why I’m voting for Nithya Raman, if only because she’s not Karen Bass — the current mayor who not only supervised the non-building of bike lanes for the last three-and-a-half years, but also personally intervened to keep Forest Lawn Drive deadly.
Not to mention my current state Assemblymember, who voted to make it virtually illegal to fix the deadly street after a more than $300,000 lobbying campaign on behalf of Forest Lawn and Mt. Sinai cemeteries, in what can only be seen as a blatant attempt to drive more business.
Pun intended.
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Speaking of things that suck, as we seem to be this morning, yet another person traversing the county without benefit of a motor vehicle was killed by a driver before they could reach the other coast.
According to the New York Times, 24-year old Norwegian Joachim Lanham was killed by a driver in Kansas while attempting to rollerblade from Los Angeles to New York.
Lanham was 22 days into his journey when he was apparently run down by an 82-year old woman, once again raising the question of what the hell someone that old was doing behind the wheel. Except that in many, if not most cases, auto-centetric road designs and the lack of viable options doesn’t give them any other choice.
I’m just tired of people coming to this country on a tourist visa, and being sent home in a box.
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If you’ve been hanging around this site for awhile, you’ve probably seen my complaints that, despite common perceptions, bike helmets aren’t the life-saving equivalent of seat belts and air bags, and do little to protect again high-speed crashes or injuries to other parts of the body.
No word on what the man actually did, or attempted to do. But the 63-year old woman responded by whacking the guy with her bike helmet — and continued to chase after him, yelling and smacking him with it, until a stranger intervened to protect her.
And him, apparently.
One more reason you should always have a helmet handy, evidently.
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Metro Bike says “Westward ho!” by expanding service between West Los Angeles and DTLA, as well as Downtown Los Angeles southward to the Rail-to-Rail Active Transportation Corridor.
Twitter post
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Kyle writes to say that Bike Streets is launching in Torrance.
They’re looking for 20 people willing to log every ride with Bike Streets and help build a Low-Stress Torrance Bike Map; you can sign up at bikestreets.com/join.
According to Kyle’s email,
Bike Streets takes a practical “Network First” approach to making biking safer and more accessible.
Instead of waiting years for individual bike lanes to be designed and funded, Bike Streets helps communities:
• Map the safest, lowest-stress streets and paths that already exist
• Connect those routes into a usable bike network
• Identify dangerous intersections and missing links that prevent the network from working
• Focus resources on fixing those critical gaps
• Start with practical, lower-cost improvements while working toward permanent infrastructure
The goal is to create a connected network that people can use now, and then continually improve it over time.
I think this is an approach worth learning about for anyone interested in making it easier and safer for kids and families to bike around their communities.
He says the project began with a podcast video from Avi Stopper of Strong Towns.
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A Bay Area TV station says a new bike trail offers a safer way to ride into Sausalito.
You can all sleep better tonight, knowing the NTSB, aka National Transportation Safety Board, is on the case of the Milligan University massacre. On the other hand, it’s not comforting to know that Tennessee thinks a bicycling route with a 55 mph speed limit is somehow okay.
A 32-year old man documented his ride in the Race Across America, better known as RAAM, finishing the more than 3,000 race in 11 days, 23 hours and 3 minutes in a tribute to his father, who is suffering from prostate cancer; his film The Road to Why is now available on Apple TV and Amazon.
That’s all KABC-7 devoted to reporting that a man riding a bicycle was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Paramount Thursday night. According to the station, the victim, who was not publicly identified, was riding near the Rosecrans Boulevard onramp to the 710 Freeway around 11:40 pm Thursday.
Apparently, they mean Rosecrans Ave and the 710. Judging by the map, if the crash actually occurred in Paramount, that would mean the onramp to the northbound 710 from westbound Rosecrans.
There’s no word on how the crash occurred, or whether the victim died at the scene. Although the divided roadway means the driver was most likely turning right onto the freeway, and either struck the victim from behind, or right-crossed him as he was riding on the sidewalk.
There’s also no description of the heartless coward who drove away, or the suspect vehicle, and Sheriff’s investigators and the CHP say they don’t have any leads.
This is at least the 51st bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the 17th we know about in Los Angeles County; this is also the third bicycling death in Southern California in the last three days.
At least 16 of those SoCal deaths have been hit-and-runs.
My News LA reports De la Torre’s body was found on the onramp to the 710, but he may have been struck while riding on Rosecrans, and knocked onto the onramp.
There’s still no description of the suspect or the vehicle.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Melchor De la Torre and his loved ones, who deserved better.
After the plumbers left on Tuesday, I took advantage of the opportunity to run out for my annual flu and covid shots. And for the first time in my 70-year run on this planet, I had a bad reaction to one or both of the shots.
I thought I was doing better after writing about the San Diego bicycling death on Wednesday and was doing well enough to work, until my blood sugar suddenly rocketed down to subterranean levels.
Then I had to turn around and write about another bicycling death in Riverside on Thursday.
I still have the horrible ringing in my ears that began along with the other symptoms a few hours after the shots. And it was the Moderna mRNA vaccines, so as RFK Jr’s followers will assure you, I will either be dead or transformed into some kind of hideous mutant anon.
So I’m officially throwing in the towel and calling it quits on this week. I’ll try to get some rest this weekend and see you bright and early on Monday.
A police detective reports the driver was turning right from Jefferson onto eastbound Indiana when the truck hit the bike rider in an apparent right hook. The victim, who has not been publicly identified, died at the scene.
Or as the detective put it, the “bicyclist and trailer collided,” as if no one was responsible for putting that trailer into the victim’s path.
To their credit, the driver immediately stopped following the collision and remained at the scene, as both the law and basic human decency require.
And frankly, if you read one of those links, you’ve read them all.
The victim, identified only as a 45-year old man, was riding a mountain bike in the eastbound bike lane on the 1500 block of Palm Ave when he was struck by the driver around 1:15 am. The driver reportedly veered right into the bike lane to strike the victim from behind.
The driver fled the scene, leaving the man behind to die in the street.
There’s no word on whether there were any witnesses. There’s also no description on the suspect vehicle, which way the driver fled, or any word on the heartless coward behind the wheel.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Traffic Division of the San Diego Police Department at 858/495-7800 or Crime Stoppers at 888/580-8477.
This is at least the 49th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the 11th in San Diego County. At least 15 of those SoCal deaths have been hit-and-runs.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
