Over seven blocks on a dangerous Sacramento road, seven severe crashes, two of them fatal

The Sacramento Bee is is chronicling all traffic-related deaths on city streets in 2024 not only to show the causes of these fatalities and what can be done to prevent them, but also to memorialize the people we lost.

Marvin Alcides Moran was buried in a white casket in El Salvador after he was hit by a car and killed on one of Sacramento’s dangerous roads. His family had his body flown to the Central American country so his mother could attend the March 7 funeral of her 22-year-old son.

The deadly crash occurred at Eighth and N streets downtown on Feb. 25. Both streets have been identified by the city as part of the “high-injury network” — those roads that see the most serious and fatal crashes.

At that intersection, Eighth and N streets are both one-way streets with three lanes. Wider streets tend to encourage higher speeds, and experts have said that one-way streets can also lead to increased speeds.

The city has installed parking-protected bike lanes over significant stretches of midtown and downtown, which help protect cyclists and coax drivers to slow down. But no bike lanes are in the immediate vicinity of the intersection where Moran was fatally struck.

He joins a list of people who have been maimed or killed within just a few blocks along Eighth Street since 2012.

Last April, a car struck and killed Shanmugan Pirabarooban, 50, an engineer from Rocklin who was crossing the street at P and Eighth, about a block away from his office at the California Department of Water Resources. A two-vehicle crash at J and Eighth severely injured a motorcyclist last March. A crash at Eighth and J severely injured a pedestrian in 2022. A vehicle-bicycle crash at Eighth and N severely injured the cyclist in 2020. A two-vehicle crash at L and Eighth severely injured a motorcyclist in 2019. In 2012, a crash at Eighth and I severely injured a cyclist.

The city has no immediate plans to make safety improvements on Eighth Street, spokeswoman Gabby Miller said. She pointed out that the Transportation Priorities Plan proposed removing one lane on Eighth between P and G streets. But that proposal is ranked as a “medium” priority.

Municipalities such as Hoboken have demonstrated that the vast majority of traffic fatalities and serious injuries are preventable: The New Jersey city recently announced it had gone seven years without a traffic death.

Like Hoboken, Sacramento took a Vision Zero pledge in January 2017 to eliminate all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2027. While the California capital has made some progress in the seven years since making that promise — including a small project adding safety measures at the intersection Eighth and P streets not long after the afternoon crash that killed Pirabarooban — the city has struggled to fund evidence-based safety measures. The deaths have continued.

According to preliminary information from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, in addition to Moran, at least nine more people died in collisions on city streets in the first 83 days of this year. The Sacramento Bee has confirmed that six of them — Mattie Nicholson, Kate Johnston, Jeffrey Blain, Aaron Ward, Sam Dent, Terry Lane and David Rink — were cyclists or pedestrians, the most vulnerable road users.

Critical public safety improvements might not make the budget

At a recent meeting of the Budget and Audit Committee, City Council members discussed whether to prioritize funding the goals of the Active Transportation Commission. Councilwoman Mai Vang said that implementing all nine of the commission’s recommendations would cost $10 million in the first year.

“This is really about funding public safety,” she said from the dais. Though no one in the meeting explicitly mentioned the ongoing deaths, committee members agreed that this was an important safety issue.

But, while facing down a budget deficit, the City Council members said it would be difficult to steer money toward the types of interventions that might have saved Moran’s life and the lives of nine other people this year.

‘Marvin forever’

Maria Escamilla, Moran’s relative, did not agree to an interview request. But, when she was collecting money for his funeral, she wrote on GoFundMe that the young man “had a whole life ahead of him.” She raised just under $3,000 before closing off donations. All she wanted, she wrote, was to send him home, “where his mother, siblings and childhood friends are waiting … with broken hearts (to) say their final goodbyes.”

On the day of the funeral, video shows that pallbearers loaded his casket into the back of a white pickup truck, modified into a hearse. Music played while two children held up a large photo collage with the words “Por siempre Marvin” in the middle — Marvin forever. The children led the procession of mourners to the grave.

The young man was surrounded by bouquets of orange, yellow and white flowers.

The Bee’s Mathew Miranda contributed to this story.