Issac Martinez, 13, killed in Ashburn, is 2nd cyclist critically or fatally injured in a week
The 8300 block of South Lawndale Avenue. Image: Google Maps
Update 6/29/20, 1:15 PM: Bike Lane Uprising is holding a human-protected bike lane vigil to honor Issac Martinez this evening at 6:30 p.m. at Columbus and Lawndale avenues, near 83rd Street. Participants are encouraged to show up as close to 6:30 as possible and bring lights and signs. A group will be riding to the vigil from the Halsted Blue Line station at Halsted and Van Buren streets, leaving at 5:15 p.m. sharp. The vigil site is next to Metra's SouthWest Service Ashburn stop, and a 4.3-mile bike ride southeast from the Midway Orange Line station.
On Sunday evening a hit-and-run driver struck and killed 13-year-old Issac Martinez on his bike in the Southwest Side Ashburn neighborhood and fled the scene. Martinez was the second person cycling to be critically or fatally struck in Chicago within a week.
At about 6:50 p.m. Sunday, authorities were called to the 8300 block of South Lawndale Avenue in response to a hit-and-run crash, the Chicago Tribune reported. According to police, Martinez was biking south on Lawndale when the driver of a "Ford work van," also heading south, struck him from behind and failed to stop to render aid. Police said the incident report narrative does not indicate the driver was turning.
While police said the boy was in a bike lane when he was struck, there are no marked bike lanes in the area, although Lawndale is part of an east-west signed bike route on 83rd Street.
Martinez was transported to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. He lived on 7800 block of South Kilpatrick Avenue, about two miles northwest of the crash site.
According to police, after reviewing security video of the collision, officers arrested the alleged driver three blocks away in the 3600 block of West 85th Place.
As of this morning, charges were still pending against the suspect, Police News Affairs said.
Martinez's death comes less than a week after the right-turning driver of a Chicago Department of Transportation truck critically injured a woman, 31, biking last Tuesday at Milwaukee and Belmont avenues in Avondale. That cyclist's condition has since been upgraded to serious-but-stable condition.
Fatality Tracker: 2020 Chicago pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on surface streets
Pedestrian: 12
Bicyclist: 3
Note: Streetsblog Chicago’s traffic death numbers represent fatal crashes on Chicago surface streets, based on media reports and/or preliminary Chicago Police Department data released by the Chicago Department of Transportation.
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