California Injury Blog
The family of a 21-year-old Carson man is trying to find the person who ran over their loved one on the street and then sped away as if he were nothing more than roadkill, according to an article in the Daily Breeze. The accident occurred Monday in Huntington Park where Jaime Perez was riding motorcycles with his friends, the article reported.
Perez reportedly fell off his motorcycle after he collided with another vehicle. At the time, another car ran him over and the driver sped off without stopping. Perez’s family members who are already grieving the untimely death of Perez are further angered and upset by the manner in which the hit-and-run driver acted.
Perez’s older brother, Doug Sanchez, is quoted in the Breeze article: “He is not roadkill. He is a human being.”
Hit-and-run is a term commonly used in the media to describe a driver who is involved in a collision or hits someone and then leaves without stopping. In most cases, it’s an attempt to escape responsibility for their part in an auto accident. In the United States these days, hit-and-run is almost like an epidemic – it’s killing hundreds of people every year.
A recent report by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reveals some frightening numbers. An average of 3.8 percent of all deadly crashes in the United States in 2001 involved a hit-and-run driver. That number rose to 7.8 percent when it came to California. Also, nearly one in five pedestrians – that’s 18 percent of pedestrians killed on our country’s roadways are victims of hit-and-run crashes.
Hit-and-run crashes are really hard on victim’s family because they never get closure until the suspect is caught. The family is often left in the dark when it comes to how the accident happened or if their loved one was at fault.
More than anything else, it’s one of the most inhuman and egregious acts imaginable – to kill or maim someone and leave them to die alone on a street! Our thoughts and prayers are with the Perez family in their time of grief. We hope officials apprehend the hit-and-run suspect and provide the family with the closure they so badly need.