A man was recovering Thursday after a vehicle struck him during a vigil for a cyclist killed in South Los Angeles.
A video taken by the KTLA news crew at the intersection of Normandie and Manchester avenues on Wednesday shows a sedan speeding through a red light, passing by an LAPD patrol SUV and hitting Quatrell Stallings, sending him flying through the air.
The driver fled the scene, where about 100 cyclists and pedestrians were gathering for a vigil for Frederick Frazier, a 22-year-old cyclist fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver near the same intersection the day before.
Stallings was apparently trying to help keep the gathering under control and assisting a woman and her dogs cross the street.
Randy Slone said Stallings, a friend, was recuperating at the Dignity Health-California Hospital Medical Center in downtown L.A. after undergoing surgery for injuries to his femur, knee and ankle.
An image posted to a GoFundMe page for Stallings shows his right leg wrapped in a cast and his head partially covered in bandage.
A recording of the moment immediately after the incident shows Stallings bleeding from the head but walking.
“He’s beat up. He’s bruised… In a couple of months he’s going to be just fine,” Slone told KTLA.
A video taken earlier during the vigil indicates that the motorist was a woman driving an early-2000s gold Toyota Avalon with a California license plate No. 8BUK639.
The Toyota was moving through the crowd when some cyclists apparently started punching the car. The footage shows a woman exiting the vehicle and slapping or punching a cyclist. The woman then took off in the Toyota but returned, hitting Stallings. A male passenger was also seen inside the vehicle.
Sgt. Rudy Ramirez, who stumbled upon the vigil, had been trying to clear the intersection when the incident happened, an LAPD spokesman said.
“It’s a shame that it happened in front of the cops and none of the cops took off and ran after the car,” Slone told KTLA.
Sgt. Ramirez said he knew that a woman had either gotten out of her vehicle or “been taken out.”
“The crowd started turning on her and were striking her,” Sgt. Ramirez said.
A number of cyclists at the vigil also surrounded the sergeant and damaged the patrol car, according to LAPD.
Authorities were still looking for the Toyota’s driver as of Thursday. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said it had no record of the car’s license plate number, suggesting the possibility that it was fake or had not been registered recently.
