Just after 10 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday January 10, Bimini Place neighbors report hearing a car crash, and seeing a small explosion. Shortly after lights went out briefly.
A driver in a white Mercedes car had been travelling fast heading west on First Street. One observer stated that the car was going “like 100 miles per hour.”
According to witness accounts, at the north end of Bimini Place at First Street, along Virgil Middle School, the driver crashed into a utility pole (breaking it in half), a parked minivan, an unhoused person’s shopping cart, before striking and killing a person riding a Lime e-scooter.
In what suggests street racing, eyewitnesses report that several nice cars arrived at the scene, and other young men ran to the driver of the white car, and helped him out of the car. They left soon after. (Some other witnesses, posting to Reddit, assert that the driver appeared drunk.)
Bimini Place neighbors report that paramedics treated the driver, who appeared mostly unhurt. They put a neck brace on him, and carried him away in a stretcher.
The paramedics did not attempt any sort of resuscitation of the scooter rider, who lay contorted and motionless on the ground.
The crash victim’s name was Kowshik, a 23-year-old exchange student from Bangladesh, who arrived in L.A. about six months ago. Kowshik died two blocks from his home on New Hampshire Avenue.
Kowshik’s roommate and longtime friend Sazzad described Kowshik as the glue of the friend group of the young exchange students, “the jolly one that brought everyone together.”
(The coroner listing has a couple of apparent errors, including showing the date of death as January 11)
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