DUI on 'Speedway' takes another young life
The city is going to fix it. The Supes promise. It will take two years and more than $900,000, but somebody is finally going to fix the Sloat Blvd. ‘speedway’, where a 17-year-old student at Lowell High School named Hanren Chang was run down on March 3.
The 17-year-old victim, Hanren Chang (photo from change.org)
By a twenty-eight-year old drunk driver named Kieran Drew Brewer.
Sloat is the straight shot that runs from 19th Avenue to the ocean, past Stern Grove, Lakeshore Plaza and Sunset Blvd, down past the zoo to the Great Highway. Speed has been a problem for “decades”, and for the better part of the first mile there’s not a single stop sign.
Ms. Chang is struck a few block from the plaza. On a Sunday night. On her birthday.
The driver doesn’t flee.
He will be charged with felony gross vehicular manslaughter, while driving with a .08 or higher blood alcohol level. Bail is set at $300,000. He could get 10 years in State Prison.
The victim was, among other things, a long distance runner on the Lowell High School track team. She had run a 5K race earlier in the day.
Sloat Blvd. - the 'speedway'
This is the second similar DUI incident in the last two and half months in San Francisco. On December 20, at around 9 p.m., Gina Eunice is driving along the 500 block of Twin Peaks Blvd, just south of Christmas Tree Pt. There’s no better view of the city.
But then suddenly out of the dark a group of four pedestrians. Eunice hits one, a woman named Yuee Yao, who is knocked down a hill. She has come to the city to visit her son. She dies.
Shortly afterward, police find Eunice, 23, in a nearby parking lot, with three other people in the car. Eunice is found to be intoxicated and is charged with felony gross vehicular manslaughter.
Bail is set $2 million, which stands in contrast to the $300,000 for Mr. Brewer.
DA spokesperson Alex Bastian will not speculate on the disparity of bails except to say, “Obviously the facts and circumstances in the two cases are different. And there were two different judges.”
A third pedestrian death case has been in the news: the trial of Christ Bucchere, 36, who was riding his bike on Thursday morning March 29, a year ago when he struck a 71-year-old man named Sutchi Hui. Mr. Hui was crossing the intersection of Market and Castro, walking along with his wife.
Out of nowhere he’s hit; blunt force trauma; a few days later, dead. The defense lawyer says the charge against his client should be reduced to a misdemeanor. The prosecutor says Christ Bucchere was going down Market Street at 30 miles an hour, and ran three lights and a stop sign before hitting Mr. Hui.
At least 18 pedestrians were killed last year in San Francisco.
Read More: KGO-TV: San Francisco teen girl killed by alleged DUI driver
SF.Streetsblog.org: After Death of Haren Chang, Meager Safety Fixes May Not Come for 2 Years
Change.org: Petitioning Norman Yee of District 7
