Tuesday Night Community Bike Ride visits two ghost bikes
Last night’s Tuesday Night Bike Ride visited two ghost bikes. The first was for Andria Ligas, a 19 year-old Flinn scholar at the U of A who was killed when she was struck from behind by a driver who then fled the scene. Her ghost bike can be found on Euclid just north of Lee. The driver turned himself in after his vehicle was located and seized by the police. He plead guilty to “leaving the scene of an accident” (his only charge) and received one year in the Pima County jail. Lauren has been obtaining police documents and researching Ligas’s case and we have found many troubling things about it that I will probably discuss in a future post.
Francisco Sanchez’s ghost bike is at 22nd and 2nd Avenue. This is another troubling one because when you investigate the scene, the police report doesn’t make much sense. For example, the police report says Mr. Sanchez was riding westbound on 22nd on the sidewalk. But there is no sidewalk there. It also says he was struck by the front of a turning utility truck. This kind of makes sense until you get to the actual scene, because the truck’s visibility is extremely limited and unless he was driving recklessly he would have had to have had his nose pretty far out into traffic. Of course anything can happen, but it is hard to believe Mr. Sanchez would have chosen to swerve out in front of the vehicle under those circumstances.
The driver was not cited in Mr. Sanchez’s death.
Despite its somewhat morbid theme, the bike ride was very large and fun. Varo rode his triple-decker tall bike with a giant flag on it celebrating the one-year anniversary of the ride. I hope someone got a picture of that to send me.
Lauren was there too in her three-wheeler cargo bike, “taking up the very, very rear” she told me.
Thanks to Janet Miller for leading the ride to the two ghost bikes.
–Erik Ryberg
July 6th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Andria was my next door neighbor when she was killed. i really appreciate someone putting up a ghost bike for her.