Windsor Hills-View Park
On Thursday, 4 August, shortly after 1:30 pm, a 37-year-old woman traveling at 130 MPH in a residential area ran a red light through the intersection of Slauson and La Brea in Windsor Hills, South LA. She slammed into 6 cars, three of which burst into flames, causing a mass road fatality incident* with 6 dead, including a pregnant mother and her son, who was just days away from his 1st birthday. 8 others were injured - a 33-year-old woman, 6 children aged 13 months to 15 years old, and the driver who caused the crash.
*“Mass Road Fatality Incident” is defined as three or more road fatalities resulting from a single traffic collision incident.
Community Healing
As a first action to support the victims of this tragedy, our Faith For SAFEr Streets ministers and pastors have been working in the community to help in any way needed. This included holding a Community Vigil at the location of the tragedy, assisting with funeral arrangements, and continuing to work with the families to help them through their grieving process.
Community Activism
Community members reached out to SAFE and asked for help to make their roads safer because while this absolute tragedy is the worst seen in the area, it is by far not the first. In fact, in 2022, fatalities in unincorporated Windsor Hills have more than doubled compared with all fatal collisions of the 10 years prior. These fatalities are 100% preventable. Road safety measures DO EXIST.
Along with one of the community members, we launched a petition to responsible city leaders and Department of Public Works executives in order to have the streets in the area made safer for the community. Something members of this community have been begging for, for years.
Next Steps…
With Pastor Patricia Strong-Fargas, co-chair of Faith For SAFEr Streets, we reached out to the office of LA County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell & the LA County Department of Public Works to demand improvements be made on these roads.
On September 9th, 2022, a community listening session was held at the request of Faith for SAFEr Streets and Streets Are For Everyone.
Initial plans were presented by the LA County Dept. of Public Works for the area, which we, along with community members, have given initial feedback on.
SAFE will continue to advocate for these areas in South LA till actual change occurs.
We have a group of activists in the Windsor Hills-View Park area who are coming together to make a difference.
We are here to help the community of Windsor Hills-View Park and all of South Los Angeles in any way we can.
“When you go beyond a relatively simple though serious problem such as police racism, however, you begin to get all the complexities of the modern American economy. Urban transit systems in most American cities, for example, have become a genuine civil rights issue -- and a valid one -- because the layout of rapid-transit systems determines the accessibility of jobs to the black community. If transportation systems in American cities could be laid out so as to provide an opportunity for poor people to get meaningful employment, then they could begin to move into the mainstream of American life. A good example of this problem is my home city of Atlanta, where the rapid-transit system has been laid out for the convenience of the white upper-middle-class suburbanites who commute to their jobs downtown. The system has virtually no consideration for connecting the poor people with their jobs. There is only one possible explanation for this situation, and that is the racist blindness of city planners.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope (essay published posthumously, January, 1969)