A police car struck and killed a skateboarder while he was riding in the center median, dashcam footage released by the Los Angeles Police Department showed.
The fatal crash, which took place on September 19, killed rider Gerardo ‘Jerry’ Estrada. The 30-year-old was struck at around 7:15pm in Highland Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles.
The cops involved in the crash were on their way to help fellow officers apprehend a someone with a felony warrant, according to LAPD Capt. Mike Bland.
They were driving northbound on Figueroa Road with their sirens on before Estrada suddenly appeared in the view of the police car’s headlights, video shows.
The officer in the passenger seat was heard audibly reacting, telling his partner to turn and ‘look out’. Moments later, the front right bumper collided with Estrada.
Estrada, a graduate of Santa Monica College, had been on his way home from work at the time.
Both officers were horrified and were heard swearing before immediately calling an ambulance to their location.
Estrada was found unresponsive and wedged beneath a parked vehicle nearby, Bland said.
Gerardo ‘Jerry’ Estrada, 30, was struck and killed by an LAPD police vehicle on September 19 while he was riding his skateboard home in Highland Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles
Pictured: The split second before Estrada is hit by the police car
Paramedics and police officers crouch over Estrada, who is unresponsive, and give him CPR. He died at the scene
The front right bumper of the police car had significant damage that was documented after the collision
Officers rendered aid on him until paramedics arrived and continued doing chest compressions. Estrada died at the scene.
The LAPD said that the officers were not driving excessively fast at the time of the crash and added the investigation will unfold over the next several months.
Witnesses who were at a nearby carnival at Sycamore Grove Park told KTLA that the impact was so loud it sounded like two cars had hit one another.
‘There are witnesses all around here, and they’ve been talking,’ Jerry Perez, Estrada’s friend, told the outlet. ‘They saw it happen, that a cop was going by fast and all of a sudden, they heard something being hit hard.’
A vigil was held the night after the crash in September. Estrada’s mother, Rosa Cazares, said her son lived just a few minutes away from where he died.
‘He was a wonderful kid,’ Cazares told KTLA. ‘A wonderful brother and uncle, too.’
Estrada, who wanted to build a career in photography and film, was working a host and bartender at a restaurant in the Los Angeles Arts District.
‘He loved music,’ his mother said. ‘His passion was taking pictures with a little bit of filming here and there.’
A GoFundMe set up by his family to pay for his funeral expenses has raised more than $27,000 toward a $35,000 goal.