BOISE, Idaho — A memorial has started at the intersection of West Washington and North 16th where a 16-year-old boy was killed after being struck by a truck on Thursday morning.
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Police continue to investigate the incident and we still don't know who had the green light. The Ada County Coroner has identified the victim as 16-year-old Jadin Zurawski.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover the costs of Jadin's funeral.
We do know that people are devastated from the Boise High community to the skateboarding community to our community in general, as people are encouraged to bring flowers down to the memorial.
"It’s heartbreaking," said David Groff who we met at the scene on Friday. "This child’s death is going to impact his family and friends, and we don’t even know, at this point, how deeply this is going to impact the community."
David Groff is the executive director of the Idaho Bike Walk Alliance. He came to the scene with a traffic consultant to look at the intersection where this happened. While we were there we blatantly saw a car run a red light.
"We have lost a youth to this," said Don Kostelec, the traffic consultant. "We recently lost another man at 11th and State Street, and just a few months ago, a person trying to access homelessness services was killed crossing Americana by Rhodes Park. That's three deaths of pedestrians near downtown Boise in a matter of months. It's heartbreaking."
They had a radar gun to measure the speed of vehicles on this one-way street and the majority of cars were abiding by the 30 mile-per-hour speed limit, though they did see someone going 46.
They also measured the width of the lanes from the center of the road to the curb, measuring a total of 26 feet, and subtracted ten to account for parked cars.
"That leaves 16-foot lane widths for motor vehicles and that is wider than what you will see on I-84 where the speed limit is 80 miles per hour," said Kostelec. "Those are the things that cause these crashes, or makes these crashes more severe than they would have been otherwise."
It's a busy corridor, I drive it all the time coming home from Bogus Basin or the Payette River. Don Groff worries about his 14-year-old son who rides it a few times a week for work.
"If he’s ten minutes late, I’m already scared," said Groff. "When I hear stories like this, I get tired more than anything because we hear about it, but then we struggle with how to react to it."
That is certainly the case in this tragedy, as the memorial continued to grow throughout the day. It includes a skateboard, and the Boise Skateboard Association told me they are reeling from this incident. There were at least three other skateboarders at the intersection at the time of the incident.
If you need help in the wake of this tragedy, the Boise Police Department's Victim Witness Coordinators are working with the Boise School District to provide support and counseling.
