In sad news, the name of person hit was revealed yesterday as being 42-year old Cairo Castaneda of North Hollywood.
There have been a number of messages sent to me by friends and family that are grieving immensely about this loss, so I can only imagine how much further this pain extends outside of my little circle.
A gofundme account has been set up to help pay for funeral costs.
In less than twenty-four hours, almost $9,000 has been raised, but they are still short of halfway to their goal.
There has already been well over one hundred people who have donated, so if you can give even just a little, that puts it that much closer to the goal.
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I went back out to the site yesterday morning roughly twenty-four hours after the collision.
There were more people bringing out flowers and paying their respects.
You could tell that the ghost bike had a big impact at this intersection as a bunch of people slowed noticing this new addition.
This is the first ghost bike I’ve helped place and hopefully the last. At least it’s a very poignant memorial that will help drivers think as they go by.
I almost lost it when a woman driving eastbound on Ventura had her cell phone out, made a u-turn onto Ventura Place, parked in the red zone and then ran in front of the light to take a quick picture before running back across to the safety of her minivan.
Sorry, you’re part of the problem.
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There’s been a lot of talk about who did what and who is to blame.
So far, there has been an endless supply of scuttlebutt and I think fueling every conspiracy theory chips away at the gravity of what happened.
I spoke with Danny Gamboa again last night and he said instead of focusing on blame, that we should be moving our efforts to make this intersection safe, so nothing like this happens again.
I will be contacting the local councilmember’s office, Paul Krekorian’s, to get a traffic study done and try to make this intersection safe for everyone.
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Thanks to all the people who have reached out in the past couple of days. It warms the heart that there is such a large community that wants to help.