LAPD searching for driver who hit, dragged scooter rider for more than 25 feet
By KCAL Staff
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LOS ANGELES (KCAL) — Authorities are searching for a hit-and-run driver in Boyle Heights who ran over a scooter rider and dragged him for 25 feet before driving away from the area on Saturday.
Video from the scene shows a man, identified as Luis Lopez, riding an electric scooter near Fickett Street and Boulder Street at around 9 p.m. Saturday when he fell and was knocked unconscious. Police say he fell after swerving around a car as he cut the corner during a left turn onto Fickett St.
“Unfortunately, he lost his balance and fell off the scooter and appears he hit his head and knocked himself out,” said LAPD Central Traffic Detective Juan Campos.
Minutes later, a white Ford Econoline van can be seen running Lopez and the scooter over, dragging him for a considerable distance before dislodged from under the car. The driver then fled from the scene without stopping to offer help.
“He looks like he stops briefly, as you see the brakes get eliminated, and should have noticed he ran over somebody,” Campos said.
Lopez was hospitalized with “severe injuries” like internal bleeding, fractured ribs and bleeding on the brain, though is expected to survive.
His family was worried that wouldn’t be the case when he was first taken to the hospital.
“When I saw him I thought I had lost him for a moment,” said Lopez’s wife Fatima Garcia, noting that Lopez, the father of a 7-year-old and self-employed handyman will now be unable to provide for his family for quite some time. “It’s going to be a slow recovery, but thank God he’ll recover.”
She’s asking the community to come together and help police locate the driver, so she and her family can take a little bit of comfort in knowing that justice has been served.
“If he would have helped him it would have been something different, but he just left him there like nothing,” she said.
Anyone with information on the case to call the Detective Juan Campos of the LAPD Central Traffic Division at (213) 833-3713. A standing $25,000 reward stands for anyone who provides information leading to the identification and/or apprehension, based on the Hit-and-Run Reward Program Trust Fund.
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