Monday, November 16, 2009

Carnage in Menlo Park

Last Thursday evening I wondered why Menlo Park police were hanging out at the office campus where I work. I noticed the fresh glass and car parts at the parking lot entrance and figured yet another scofflaw motorist running the red light at that intersection. The city installed red light cameras there, and it wasn't because of hordes of light running cyclists.

What happened was this, less than 300 yards from my office:
As a Ford Mustang and a white compact car sped through the intersection southbound on Bayfront, the Mustang clipped a blue Toyota, spinning it around and leaving at least two occupants injured, according to witness accounts. The Mustang then hit the white car, and both spun out on opposite sides of the Bayfront median.

"They were racing," said Kim Arrowood, a Sun Microsystems employee who saw the crash. "They had to have been going 70 mph."

The Mustang was wrecked, but it didn't stop the driver from getting away, Arrowood said. He ran over to the white car, yelled "Let's go!" to the driver and hopped in. The two then turned around and drove off.


The news gets worse:
A 6-year-old Menlo Park girl died Friday afternoon from injuries she sustained in a car crash a day earlier.

[Lisa Xavier] was traveling in the back seat of a blue Toyota Camry with her parents at about 2 p.m. Thursday when a black Mustang headed northbound on the Bayfront Expressway ran a red light at Willow Road and plowed into the car.


Police located the crashed Mustang's owner, and that person apparently pegged one Shannon Fox as the driver, who police so far have been unable to locate.

More, similar stories from around the nation at Streetblog's weekly carnage.

3 comments:

Fen said...

Stories like this make me sick. Street racing is insane and innocent people do not deserve to die because some people are idiots. Really awful news.

ammon said...

same intersection where American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam was killed

Yokota Fritz said...

@Erik - agreed; sad stuff.

@Ammon - Yep, I remember that. The red light cameras at that intersection were installed shortly after Halberstam's death.