Three-year-old Nikita May remains in recovery at SF General Hospital, after being hit on his bike by a pickup truck driver at Fulton Street and 43rd Avenue on April 10. Friends, family, and community members have set up a fundraiser to help the family see him return to health.
May was making his way through a crosswalk on a green light at about 11:45 a.m. when the left-turning driver ran him over. May suffered life-threatening injuries, including brain injuries and brain stem damage, "the full extent of which is not yet fully known," according to the fundraiser page. He also suffered a number of broken bones -- his jaw, chin, fractured clavicle, femur, and several ribs, in addition to a "bruised/collapsed lung" and a ruptured spleen.
Although police took the driver in for questioning, according to media reports, there was no word on whether he received a citation or could be charged.
As neighbors told reporters after the crash, Fulton, a four-lane thoroughfare, serves as a speedway for drivers along the border of Golden Gate Park in the Richmond. May was run over at a park entrance, close to a day care center.
Rob Weir, a neighbor of the intersection, told KTVU after the crash, "We have always said it's going to take somebody getting seriously hurt, probably a pedestrian, for something to happen. And that, to me, is too late already."
Exactly one month earlier, a five-year-old boy and his babysitter were hospitalized after being struck by a driver just six blocks away, at Fulton and 37th. SFPD reportedly issued that driver a citation for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
The fundraiser, organized by Creative Arts Charter School, has raised $71,660 as of today.
