By Jesse Dungan
March 6, 2008
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors voted Tuesday to approve a $21 million settlement with family and friends of a 4-year-old girl killed in 2003 in a Municipal Railway accident, a spokesman for the agency said today.
On February 11, 2003, Elizabeth Dominguez was fatally struck by a Municipal Railway truck driven by Sebastian Garcia, then 58, at the corner of 24th Street and Potrero Avenue. Elizabeth’s mother, Sylvia Lopez, her friend, Monica Valencia, and her friend’s grandmother, Candelaria Valencia, were with the girl and were also injured during the collision.
In 2005, a jury awarded Dominguez’ family and the Valencia family $27 million, however, the city appealed the case.
On Tuesday, the board of directors voted 6-1 to approve a $21 million settlement, said agency spokesman Judson True.
“The SFMTA extends its condolences to the family of Elizabeth Dominguez,” Nathaniel Ford, executive director of the agency, said in a prepared statement. “While the agency is significantly impacted by the magnitude of the settlement, we recognize that no amount of money can erase this terrible tragedy.”
The money will be distributed through the Municipal Transportation Agency’s operating fund over three years, True said. The first payment will be made within 30 days of Tuesday’s meeting.
“This was a horrible human tragedy,” said Alexis Thompson, a spokeswoman for the city attorney’s office. “The family of Elizabeth Dominguez suffered an incalculable loss and our hearts go out to them.”
The Hunger Site
March 6, 2008 at 9:19 am
What’s been missing in all the stories about the death of Elizabeth Dominguez is any history of the community’s earlier efforts to make Potrero Avenue safer. Residents and parents at the Buena Vista School had long asked for better signals and crosswalks and other traffic calming measures there. The City stalled. After Elizabeth’s death and a continued push for changes, Potrero was finally reconfigured to reduce car traffic lanes, add medians and bike lanes, and upgrade signals and crosswalks. No one can say whether the death of a little girl would have been avoided had the City responded earlier, but the community’s dogged efforts may have prevented more such tragedies.
Similar efforts are now under way to make nearby Cesar Chavez Street safer. CC Puede, a group of neighbors, merchants, parents, and transportation activists, has been working for over two years to bring about changes along this dangerous corridor to convert it from a traffic sewer that acts as a barrier between the Mission and Bernal Heights to a street worthy of the man it’s named after.