Evidently, leaving someone to die alone in the streets of Los Angeles just isn’t news anymore.
At least, that was the case Wednesday night, when a 50-year old man riding a bicycle was killed by a hit-and-run driver in South LA’s Hyde Park neighborhood.
Only two sites — Los Angeles Patch and Two Urban Girls — even bothered to post the story online, copied word-for-word from City News Service.
Meanwhile, the silence from the mainstream media was deafening.
According to the story from CNS, the victim was riding east on Vernon Ave at 6th Ave when he was read-ended by the driver, who continued on without stopping.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
At this time, there is no description of the suspect or the vehicle used to kill the victim, and no other information available.
A street view shows one lane in each direction on Vernon, with a parking lane on each side and a left turn bay, along with a complete lack of bicycle infrastructure.
This is at least the 36th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County, and the fifth in the City of Los Angeles.
That’s just more than half the SoCal total for this time last year, and compares to 21 bicycling deaths in the county at the start of last October.
Either we’re having an exceptionally good year, or there are a lot more crashes that we’re just not hearing about.
I’d put my money on the latter.
This is also at least the 13th fatal hit-and-run involving someone on a bicycle since the first of the year.
Update: The victim has been identified as 51-year old Jacinto Ayala Gurrola. There’s still no word on where he lived, or any description of the suspect vehicle or driver.
My deepest prayers and sympathy for Jacinto Ayala Gurrola and his loved ones.
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