Salem Breakfast on Bikes: Speeding Driver Kills Jaime Le Ann Hall on Skateboard Friday Night

Monday, January 6, 2020

Speeding Driver Kills Jaime Le Ann Hall on Skateboard Friday Night

A person apparently speeding and making an unsafe pass of another car struck and killed a person on skateboard late Friday night.

The investigation developed very quickly, and the paper published a relatively complete story before the Police published a press release on their flash alert public wire:

A Salem man was charged with manslaughter and DUII after he allegedly struck a skateboarder with a car Saturday in northeast Salem.

Salem Police officers and medics responded to a crash around 2 a.m. in the 600 block of Hawthorne Avenue NE where they found a woman dead at the scene.

The suspect, Javier Luevano-Plascencia, 23...was later arrested at the police department after consenting to a blood and urine sample.

The victim was identified Monday as Jaime Le Ann Hall, 42, of Salem...[who] was crossing the street on a skateboard.

According to the probable cause statement, a witness told officers he was driving south on Hawthorne Avenue when the suspect passed him on the left "at a high rate of speed" and struck the woman

Note the active verbs and concrete driver: "he allegedly struck a skateboarder with a car." Also nothing about whether Hall had a helmet or was illuminated like a Christmas tree. This is the right way to report things. It may be in no small reason because charges have already been filed and the initial assignment of blame was unambiguous.

(And 2am on Saturday morning is like last call on Friday night, so I take this as part of Friday night rather than "very early Saturday morning.")