Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003 | 11:23 a.m.
Nearly every day for the past six years, Ashlee Marie Bicknell used a faded crosswalk at Bonanza Road at Wardelle Street to get home.
Last autumn, the city of Las Vegas opted not to repaint that crosswalk to encourage pedestrians to use a safer, painted crosswalk at 28th Street and Bonanza, where a traffic signal light had just been installed.
Bicknell, a 15-year-old sophomore drama student at Desert Pines High School, was killed Monday after being hit by a motorist at Bonanza and Wardelle.
Her death raises questions about pedestrian right-of-way and the ways in which Las Vegas crosswalks are maintained, especially in the wake of the Oct. 15 accident on Shinnecock Hills Avenue at Tucci Street in Southern Highlands that killed one teenage girl and critically injured another.
A common misconception, officials say, is that there needs to be painted lines on the street to constitute a legal crosswalk. Not so. According to Nevada law, crosswalks exist any time two public streets come together whether they are marked with paint or not.
When 13-year-old Adriana Lauzon was hit at Robindale and Torrey Pines and died six days later, and her friend 13-year-old Tabatha Speas was sent to the University Medical Center with critical injuries, there was a community uproar for the installation of painted crosswalks.
A day after the accident, angry area residents created a makeshift crosswalk with tape, but Metro Police forced them to remove it. Speas was discharged from the University Medical Center on Sunday and efforts continue to make Robindale and Torrey Pines a four-way stop with marked crosswalks.
At Bonanza and Wardelle, the ghostly faded white lines at the intersection have made it difficult for Metro investigators to determine whether Bicknell was in the crosswalk.
And investigators say that even if she had been that did not necessarily give her the right-of-way on a busily traversed Bonanza Road.
That angers Bicknell's mother, Catherine Chavez, who watched in horror on a Bonanza Road sidewalk as her daughter was struck at 5:45 p.m. Monday by a westbound Ford pickup truck driven by Geoffrey DuFrene, 27, of Las Vegas. Bicknell was en route home from a play rehearsal at the school.
Police have not issued citations pending the conclusion of the investigation.
"Ashlee always crossed streets in crosswalks," Chavez said Tuesday as she stood in the busy intersection of the crosswalk where her daughter was killed and showed a Sun reporter how the accident occurred.
"Whether it is painted or not, everyone in this area uses this crosswalk to get to (The Convenience Store and Deli on Bonanza Road). The kids who go to schools in the area use this crosswalk. It should be painted and maintained."
Chavez said cars constantly speed through the area. There are no east-west stop signs or traffic signals at Wardelle and Bonanza.
While police have not determined that speed was a factor in Bicknell's death, Chavez questions how her daughter could have suffered, among other injuries, two broken legs, a broken hip, a lacerated liver and severe chest and head injuries had the vehicle been doing just 35 mph, as a witness told police.
Bicknell was taken by ambulance to University Medical Center, where she died from her her injuries, police said.
Auto-pedestrian fatalities in the Metro Police jurisdiction have remained pretty consistent the last three years.
To date this year there have been 26 auto-pedestrian fatalities -- 26.3 percent of the 99 total fatalities, Metro said.
By comparison, last year there were 35 fatal auto-pedestrian accidents, and in 2001, there were 28 -- both slightly more than 27 percent of the total fatalities.
O.C. White, traffic engineer for the city of Las Vegas, said the city made the decision not to maintain the Bonanza/Wardelle crosswalk to encourage safety and save lives.
"When we put in the signal light at 28th Street, we wanted to encourage people to use the safest point in the area for crossing," White said. "You can't paint crosswalks everywhere and we didn't want to send a mixed message by having two painted crosswalks with one being considered safer than another."
"But, legally speaking there is a crosswalk at Bonanza and Wardelle. It's just no longer painted or maintained."
Another misconception is that the pedestrian always has the right-of-way or should have the right-of-way. Some point to neighboring California, where it is widely accepted that the pedestrian has the right-of-way and the basic practice is that you brake for pedestrians.
However, California authorities say that state's laws mirror Nevada's in that the pedestrian right-of-way is not absolute.
"In California pedestrians do not automatically have the right-of-way under every condition," said California Highway Patrol Trooper spokesman Adam Cortinas in Barstow.
"If a vehicle is close enough to the pedestrian to constitute a hazard, the driver has the right of way. If the driver is, let's say, a half-mile away and approaching the intersection and the pedestrian enters the roadway, then the pedestrian has the right of way."
Basically, he said, it is a common sense and courtesy issue.
Residents in the area of Wardelle and Bonanza say Bicknell's death should send a message to city officials to change their policy of not maintaining crosswalks once they have been established and people get used to using them.
"I've been in this neighborhood for three years and this has always been a crosswalk," said Tyrone Coleman. "The city needs to get out here and paint it again. I almost got hit crossing here the other day. How many more people are going to have to die to get this changed?"
Quincy Thompson, also a resident of the area for three years, said, "nobody is going to walk all the way down to 28th Street, cross there and walk back to go to a convenience store that's just across the street. This is where we cross."
White says that's OK -- and perfectly legal -- as long as people realize they are taking their lives in their hands.
"It's a matter of convenience versus safety," White said. "All we can do is try to make things as safe as possible, but it is up to each individual to decide whether to cross where there is no signal or to cross where there is a signal.
"I've gone to many schools to talk to students, and I find that many of them believe that if there is a painted crosswalk it is automatically safe to cross. I tell them we have not yet found any type of paint that will stop a car."
Supporters of painted crosswalks argue that the bright white lines will make drivers more cautious when they drive through an area. The lines will make drivers look for pedestrians, proponents say.
While Bicknell's family struggles to deal with her untimely death and a police investigation that has issued a preliminary finding of pedestrian error, they remembered Tuesday a vibrant young girl who loved shopping, going to movies, listening to music and designing fashion clothing.
"She designed her own eighth grade prom dress," said Bicknell's grandmother Catherine Jackson of Las Vegas, displaying photos of the elegant floor-length Burgundy lace on ivory satin gown. "Ashlee also designed her own wedding dress and jean fashions. She had a book filled with designs she had created."
Bicknell's most recent project was costume design for the school play "Alice in Wonderland," which opens 7 p.m. Thursday at Desert Pines.
On Tuesday Bicknell's family went to the school to comfort her classmates and ask that the school go ahead with plans for Thursday's and Friday's shows.
"Ashlee would have wanted the show to go on," Chavez said. "She had worked so hard on this play."
Desert Pines High School Principal Roger Jacks said the Thursday and Friday performances will go on as scheduled, but the Saturday show has been canceled to allow performers and other classmates to attend Bicknell's funeral that has tentatively been set for Saturday at a time and location to be determined.
"Ashlee was a good student who really enjoyed the technical end of theater production," Jacks said Tuesday. "Yesterday she was so excited about a mouse (costume) that she had just made for the play."
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