Teen Riding Skateboard Killed in Bell Hit-and-Run Crash

Several drivers who pulled over during the incident are being sought by police for information.

Joshua Maldonado was supposed to be getting ready to start the second month of his senior year at Bell High School. He was supposed to dress up, with a tie, for a second job interview at In-n-Out Burger on Tuesday. His dad says he wanted to be a dentist.

But late Saturday night, the 17 year old was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

He was riding his skateboard about 11:20 p.m. along Gage Avenue - just four blocks from home - and as he approached the intersection at Bear Avenue, police say he rode along one lane of traffic as a car approached.

Cathy Estrada was waiting to turn left onto Bear Avenue when she says she saw what happened next.

"The young boy was on a skateboard, like in the middle, not the sidewalk but on the street, going east and the car was going west and it was head-on," she said.

Estrada said the impact was so severe, she likened it to a head-on crash with a second car. But this was just one car - a late-model, white Camry according to Estrada. Bell police think it was an older-model, silver import - and one young boy.

"What's so sad, even his shoes had flew off, and his hat and everything. Skateboard was left on its side," Estrada said.

Police say surveillance video captured the moment of impact.

Estrada says she believes the driver knows they hit the boy because of what they did for a short moment at the scene: they stopped.

"He stopped, realizing I guess, what he hit," she said. "He glanced as the body fell off his car, he saw him and then just took off."

Candles light the spot where Maldonado died. Family and friends gathered there for an impromptu vigil, growing by the minute Sunday night.

"Your brother wanted to be famous," Maldonado's father said through tears, hugging his son Christian.

Chris Maldonado is a student at UC Riverside, studying to be a doctor. When he got the phone call about his brother, he says he couldn't grasp the reality.

"She said something had happened to Josh and that they found his body," he said. "At the moment, I didn't feel it. I thought it was fake, I was dreaming or something. But then my mom came home, she was crying, she hugged my neighbor and said he had been killed, that he had been run over. And at that moment I knew, I wasn't dreaming anymore."

As the grief sets in with the family, the brother says the anger is building, believing that someone deliberately let his little brother die.

"The most important thing right now is to find out who did this," he said. "After that is the remembrance of Josh."

Friends spoke of the shock they felt when they heard what happened, too. Tony Escobar says he rode his own skateboard a little more cautiously Sunday.

"He's not even our friend, he's our family," he said. "Today when I heard about it, I was actually making sure nothing happens to me."

Estrada's description of the car and descriptions from other witnesses have not added up. Maldonado's brother says whoever that driver is did nothing less than commit murder.

"They fled the scene," he says. "They stopped for a second in what I believe it's their own shock of what was going on at the moment."

Now the family prepares to bury a young man, while at the same time hoping the driver will help bring closure to what will undoubtedly change their lives forever.

Chris summed it up for the driver, "You still have to serve up your actions and make it right."

Contact Us