Another Salemite Dead after Hit and Run

A family got the worst kind of holiday news last week. 

After striking and killing Hermilo Mata Jr. Tuesday evening on a residential street, a driver abandoned their car and fled the scene.

From the Salem PD, with edits:

On December 22, 2020 at approximately 6:45 p.m. Salem Police officers responded to the 3700 block of Kingdom Way NE on the report of a pedestrian struck by a [person driving a] vehicle.

Officers located the victim, Hermilo Mata Jr., age 63 of Salem, in the roadway. Mata was transported to Salem Health where he was later declared deceased.

The [driver of the] vehicle that struck Mata fled the scene but [the car] was later located and seized by investigating officers. The driver of the vehicle has not been located.

This is an ongoing investigation, and as such details will not be released until the case has been updated.

Anyone with information please call the Salem Police Tips Line at 503-588-8477. [link added, rhetoric erasing the driver modified]

Saturday's rewrite in print

This post may be updated.

Back in 2015 we said "troubling"
but really, how troubled are we?

Killed in 2020

• Jaime Le Ann Hall (on skateboard) 
• Sharon Pritchard
• Mario Lopez-Lopez (walking a bike)  
• Andrew Otho Polston (biking on Windsor Island Road)
• Jolene Braasch Berry (on bike)
• Richardo Morales Avila (in McMinnville)
• Octavious Calloway (on I-5)
• Selma Pierce
  

Killed in 2019

• Marshall Leslie
• Linda Adamson (south Salem) and Stephanie Ashford (just outside Salem)  
• Jason Libel (on bike)
• Josephine Watkins
• Rodric Kenyon Drolshagen 

Killed in 2018

• Kirk Daniel Wilcox
• Jack Rice
• Alexandria Tereshka  
• Daniel Tibbot

Killed in 2017

• Srabonti Haque
• Sandra Hill
• Shatamera Pruden

Killed in 2016:

• Olivia Stroup
• Jaren Nash  
• Alex Armes
• Anthony Earnest  
• Baxter Harrell
• Unknown (just outside Salem)
• Bradley Goad (in Silverton)

Killed in 2015:

• James Alton
• Caroline Storm
• William Hatch 
• Travis Lane
• David McGregor  
• Michael and Christine Crossland 
• Rebecca Schoff

On erasing the driver - Columbia Journalism Review

For more discussion of language see these recent examples:

• "Headline Omits Verb, Erases the Driver; New TRB Paper Addresses Problem" (2019). This also has links to a follow-up study on framing and reader interpretation.
•  See the way the story develops with different publications in "Driver Strikes and Kills Marshall Leslie on Foot near Downtown Safeway." (2019)

For more on the cultural and legal context of our autoism in which we minimize the responsibility of drivers and shift blame to people on foot, see:

• "Why so much Acceptance for Traffic Cone Theory of Walking?" with discussion of a Salem Police PSA (2015)
• Notes on a City of Salem PSA this month, "City PSA on Time Change and Safety Needs Paradigm Change Itself." It has many links to the history of jaywalking also. (2019)
• On "distracted walking," "Death on Foot: Too Much on Distracted Walking Canard." (2018)
• "Why Pedestrian Rights themselves may not be Sufficient." (2015)
• Two discussions of a law review article about our system of subsidy for autoism, "The Laws for Compulsory Autoism at The Atlantic," and "Police Publish Video on How to Speed Without a Ticket." (both 2019)