Hit-and-Run Victim Damian Kevitt To Finally Finish His Bike Ride

GRIFFITH PARK—In the year since Damian Kevitt was hit by a minivan while bicycling in Griffith Park and dragged for 600 feet stuck in the van’s undercarriage up the on-ramp to the I-5 at full speed, it’s been a turbulent road to recovery.

The accident occurred as Kevitt and his wife were out on a Sunday bike ride. Having picked up groceries for lunch, they were about 400 feet from their picnicking destination, he said, when the motorist in a light-colored minivan, stopped in heavy traffic, made a sudden left turn and struck Kevitt without stopping. The suspect is still at large.

Kevitt spent the following four months in the hospital where he had 11 surgeries, his right leg was amputated and he nearly lost his left leg as well. He had 20 broken bones and his shattered shoulder was reassembled with nine titanium screws, a cadaver bone and glue.

Today Kevitt is back on his bicycle and dedicated to finishing that ride he started in February 2013.

With sponsors including Los Angeles Council Districts 4 and 13, and California Assemblymember Mike Gatto’s (D-Los Angeles) today Kevitt will be leading bicyclists in the “Finish the Ride.” Funds raised by the event will benefit the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and Challenged Athletes Foundation.

The ride will start from the Church of Scientology parking lot on Sunset Boulevard and then progress to Fountain, Hyperion and Rowena avenues and then finally onto Riverside Drive into Griffith Park. The route is roughly the same Kevitt rode last year.

“There’s a lot of interest across the city,” Kevitt said, “largely because of what it represents as a concerted effort to bring awareness and address the subject of bicycle safety and hit and runs across the greater Southern California area, which is not just a bicycling concern, it’s a pedestrian concern [and] it’s a motorcyclist, car and driver concern across all… the streets of Los Angeles.”

In Sacramento California Assemblymember Gatto—whose 43rd District includes Griffith Park—has been pushing a bill through committees that would expand the state’s hit-and-run penalties.

Gatto’s AB 1532 bill passed through the Assembly Public Safety Committee with a unanimous 7-0 vote in March, and would include automatic license suspension for motorists who flee the scene of any accident involving another person, even if the victim’s injuries are minor. Current laws place few consequences on hit-and-run offenders whose victims are moderately injured.

“The only way to know if you hurt someone is to stop,” Gatto said in a statement. “The only way to get someone medical help is to stop. Allowing drivers who don’t stop to keep their license, adds insult to their victim’s injuries.”

As the Los Feliz Ledger reported last month, last year there were more than 1,050 hit-and-runs in the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Northeast Division, which spans from Los Feliz through parts of Echo Park, Griffith Park and Eagle Rock. Hit-and-runs account for about half of all traffic collisions in the Northeast, many of which are only property damage such as broken side mirrors but others seriously injure victims.

A man was killed in February crossing Riverside Drive, near Home Restaurant in Silver Lake, after being hit by two different vehicles. After the first car struck him and he was left lying on the pavement, a second car then crashed into him and dragged him a short distance, police officials said. Neither driver stopped to identify themselves or help the victim. This was the first fatal hit-and-run death in Northeast Division for more than a year, though there were about nine accidents in 2013 that resulted in severe injuries.

Kevitt said Gatto’s bill is a “vital first step” in addressing hit-and-runs but not all change needs to come from legislature. Awareness and education campaigns are necessary, he said.

“Forty-eight percent of all accidents being a hit and run, that’s an indicator of just a moral decay across all of society because it’s a moral choice to run from an accident,” Kevitt said.