Once again, a man has died following a violent hit-and-run while riding his bike in South Los Angeles.
And once again, the LAPD doesn’t seem to think the public needed to know about it.
According to KCBS-2/KCAL-9, 37-year old South LA resident Jorge Guerra was struck by a hit-and-run driver while riding home from the park with his two young children on July 8th.
Fortunately, his two-year old son Nathan and four-year old daughter Madelyn weren’t seriously injured; their father wasn’t so lucky.
Guerra was rushed to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, but lapsed into a coma after arriving; he died of organ failure on July 16th.
The LAPD places the crash on northbound Wadsworth Ave north of 88th Street at 8:40 pm, when a speeding driver slammed into the bike they were riding after turning onto the narrow residential street.
The driver continued north on Wadsworth, crashing into several parked cars before stopping just south of Manchester Blvd. He ran off, leaving the damaged car behind.
Police are still looking for the suspect, who hasn’t been identified; unsurprisingly, the car he was driving was stolen. As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the driver.
Now Guerra’s wife is faced with raising her kids as a grieving single mother while in the middle of a pandemic.
A crowdfunding campaign to help defray Guerra’s funeral expenses has raised just under $6,000, far short of the $25,000 goal.
Unfortunately, like the death of Melvin “Peanut” Frye last month, the LAPD apparently failed to inform the public at the time of the crash — or alert them to a dangerous car thief hiding in their midst. Even though both Los Angeles and California have Yellow Alert systems to get the word out as quickly as possible.
There’s no explanation for why the LAPD continually refuses to use them; evidently, they’d rather wait until the trail goes cold and people have forgotten key details before asking for their help. Which could be one reason why hit-and-run drivers continue to get away with it here.
Even though similar systems have been used successfully in other cities to bring hit-and-run drivers to justice.
This is at least the 35th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County. Over half of those deaths in the county have been hit-and-runs.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Jorge Guerra and all his family and loved ones.
We offer up our prayers for the family and friends of Mr. Jorge Guerra.
The failure of LAPD to use tools to capture people using motor vehicles for violence is dumbfounding. How long do they usually wait before calling an Amber Alert? Not trying to be facetious, just asking if there is significant delay in using tools that allow the general population to provide clues for other types of crimes because of a system-wide attitude of “we solve the crimes around here”. There have been instances of this attitude that delayed Amber Alerts in TX when the system was first put in place.
They usually respond immediately to a missing child.