Thomas Breen photo
Christian Marrero recuperates in his aunt’s Newhallville walk-up.
The scene of the May 30 crash.
Christian Marrero lay on the couch with a broken arm and leg and lacerated organs, playing video games with his younger cousin as his aunt chided him for acting so recklessly — and thanked God that her nephew survived a grisly dirt bike crash.
The 17-year-old high school senior returned from Yale New Haven Hospital to his aunt’s walk-up second-floor Newhall Street apartment on Monday, a full 11 days after plowing his dirt bike into the side of a gray Hyundai driving up High Street. The downtown collision sent him and a 21-year-old dirt bike passenger flying over the car and onto the pavement outside the Yale University Art Gallery on Chapel Street on May 30 at around 6 p.m.
Marrero’s broken leg.
Marrero, who moved to New Haven from Puerto Rico four years ago, said he shattered his arm and his femur and received lacerations to his liver, his spleen, and his kidney in the crash.
The passenger riding on the back of the bike also survived, he said, and was discharged after five days in the hospital with lesser injuries.
Darren Totten, the Madison native whose car Marrero slammed into two Thursdays ago, told the Independent that he escaped the crash unscathed, though his car was totaled.
“I learned a lot,” Marrero said sheepishly Tuesday as he paused the game of Fortnite on his aunt’s television. His spear-wielding avatar was suspended in place as Marrero repositioned his cast-bound arm and swollen leg.
His aunt Jessica said Marrero is a good kid: about to be a high school graduate, never involved with drugs, and an aspiring auto mechanic.
That said, she added, he won’t be riding dirt bikes any time soon. He’s her only nephew, her sister’s only child. “It’s too scary” thinking of him back on a bike, racing through city streets, she said.
Charges Expected
Marrero’s aunt Jessica.
According to an incident report written by city police Officer Vincent DeStefanis and released to the New Haven Independent following a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Marrero sped through a red traffic light at High and Chapel before colliding with the Hyundai on May 30 at around 6 p.m.
DeStefanis wrote that a Yale University Art Gallery surveillance camera captured the crash on video, and that a witness at the scene told the police that the Totten’s car clearly had the right of way.
DeStefanis’ report indicates that the police plan on charging Marrero with one count of reckless driving, one count of reckless endangerment, one count of operating a motorcycle without a license, one count of operating a motorcycle without insurance, and one count of failing to obey an overhead signal.
On Tuesday, Marrero told the Independent that he didn’t remember what exactly happened the afternoon of the crash. “His memory of it is completely gone,” his aunt Jessica said.
Marrero said he has long loved to ride dirt bikes, even before his family moved from Puerto Rico to New Haven.
“For fun,” he said in slightly broken English about why he rides, even on city streets. “Because I like it. Riding with friends.”
“He knows there are rules,” his aunt said. “But there’s really no place for people to ride.”
If New Haven had a dedicated dirt bike park in town, Marrero and his aunt said, Marrero and his fellow riders would use it.
“We need to be safe,” Marrero said when asked for his main takeaway from the crash. Now that he has completed high school, he said, he would like to continue his education and train to become an auto mechanic, though he’s not currently enrolled in any such programs.
The Hyundai Driver’s View
Hyundai driver Totten, reached by phone on Tuesday, said he’s grateful that the two dirt bike riders survived. “I wasn’t injured in any way, shape, or form,” he said. “I was personally fine after the accident. Though my car was totaled, which was a total loss.”
He said he works in Hartford, and that the capital city has similar problems as New Haven with dirt bike riders cruising through city streets with police hampered by no-chase policies. He approves of the no-chase policies, he said, as chases might only further endanger drivers, pedestrians, officers, and dirt bike riders themselves. But, he said, that leaves this problem feeling pretty intractable.
“It’s scary when they come zipping by you,” he said. “I don’t know what if anything could change.”
He described the dirt bike collision that left his car totaled as “like being hit by lightning,” both because of the violent jolt to his vehicle and because of how rare it is for dirt bikes to make such a head on crash with a car.
“It scares the heck out of you,” he said. “To get hit by one is really just bad luck on my part.”
I had the pleasure of speaking with Lt. Jacobson at this morning's Project Longevity Awards Service.
Lt. Jacobson has spoken with some of the leaders in the dirt bike community and he has some suggestions with respect to solutions - place(s) to ride, new technology ordered, deterrence and new legislation. Lt. Jacobson is open to meeting with the community - again. I will email our elected officials (Mayor and Alders) and CMTs and Mayoral Candidates to see if there is any interest within the community. Urn has already pledged to attend. If there is enough interest I will schedule another meeting to address this problem. If you are still reading, and interested in assisting, you may reach me at the link below.
Dennis Serfilippi
https://www.facebook.com/ournewhaven.org/