Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Pasadena City College professor Gabriel Crispo and his beloved Labrador retriever, Niño, who were killed in the Huntington Drive median by an automobile that was involved in a street race.
What Phil Raacke experienced one year ago this Saturday is still fresh in his mind.
“Like it was yesterday,” Raacke said on Monday, his voice becoming hushed.
It was July 4, 2019, and Raacke — president and CEO of San Marino Security Systems — was in his Huntington Drive office complex when a loud noise pierced the holiday tranquillity.
“I ran out the door and saw the car and the dust flying,” Raacke recalled. “I ran across the street and saw the dog. And I saw the victim. I saw him lying across the street and I ran over to him.”
Raacke estimates it was “probably 20 to 30 seconds” after he heard the initial commotion that he came upon the body of Gabriel Crispo, who Raacke and the rest of the community would soon learn had been struck by a white Mercedes-Benz sedan while jogging in the Huntington median at Kenilworth Avenue.
“I thought maybe I could do something, but it was immediately apparent he was gone,” said Raacke. “He died on impact. That was hard to take.”
His words trailed off into a temporary silence — understandable, even for someone who was a police officer for 14 years before entering the security trade and was at least somewhat accustomed to the kind of scene he confronted that morning.
Crispo’s treasured Labrador retriever, Niño, also perished in the accident.
Raacke checked on three young men who had stopped their vehicles near the scene, including one who he soon learned was the driver of the white Mercedes, which had careened across the median before coming to rest in one of the four eastbound lanes of Huntington Drive. Officials from the San Marino police and fire departments arrived and the area was secured, so Raacke went back to his high-tech office. He reviewed myriad security cameras on the premises.
“We were able to see everything from the time that the car hit the victim,” Raacke said. “I watched it once and I never watched it again.”
A few minutes later, Raacke handed a jump drive that contained the footage to Police Chief John Incontro, who later used it in the investigation. That simple handoff ended Raacke’s involvement in the matter, but the memory of the day resonates — for him and those close to Crispo.
“Being a cop for 14 years, I have seen things like that occasionally,” Raacke said haltingly. “But when I watched the recording … that may have hit me harder than anything I ever saw as a police officer. It’s the Fourth of July and it’s supposed to be a day of celebration. I got there and there was nothing I could do for him. I couldn’t do anything for him. He was just gone … in an instant.”
Crispo, a 49-year-old English as a second language professor at Pasadena City College; his girlfriend, Marta Blanco; and the ever-present Niño had left their home in San Gabriel that Thursday morning and jogged toward San Marino, a familiar routine for the fitness aficionados. As Crispo and Niño crossed Huntington — Blanco trailed several yards behind — they were struck by the Mercedes and launched across the median and into the street. The Mercedes tore tire tracks through the median and clattered across four thankfully empty lanes before coming to rest approximately 100 feet beyond the point of impact. An investigation would later determine that two of the males Raacke saw were driving separate westbound cars at high rates of speed. Their vehicles collided, pushing the Mercedes into the median, where it struck and killed Crispo and his dog at 10:34 a.m.
The two then-17-year-olds, who live and attended school outside of San Marino, each pleaded guilty on Dec. 20 to felony vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and were sentenced to serve in an alternative work services program, the juvenile equivalent to community labor. The driver of the Mercedes served 60 days in the program; the other driver, 30 days. Each was also required to complete a separate hospital and morgue volunteer program and remain on probation for an undetermined duration. A third male, also a juvenile, was later cleared in the investigation.
At the time of the sentencing, Incontro said he was “disappointed in the accountability the court held them to.”
“I understand there’s an importance to rehabilitate them,” Incontro said after the decision was made public. “We’re not trying to punish them but rehabilitate them, and that’s important. But there has to be a sense of accountability, and I don’t think that happened in this case.
Friends, family members and students attended a makeshift vigil for Gabriel Crispo a few days after he was killed on this very site. Mourners brought photographs, candles and other keepsakes to remember the popular educator.
“They deliberately sped — they were racing — and they killed somebody,” he added. “To me, [the sentence] doesn’t fit what their actions were.”
Christy Neville knew Crispo for the final 13 years of his life and still misses her friend, who she said was “the life of the party.”
“For me personally, it’s still hard to believe that he is gone,” said Neville. “Even now, when someone brings it up it makes me sad. It’s still really fresh in my mind.”
She allowed herself a moment of levity when she said Crispo “would not be having any of this stuff” associated with the coronavirus pandemic if he was still alive.
“Knowing him for so long, I also know that being quarantined and wearing a mask and not going to the gyms, he would not be having this,” Neville said with a hearty laugh. “He would be at the beach, the Rose Bowl, the gym. No, he would not be having this.”
Gabriel Crispo was remembered by a friend as “the life of the party.”
Crispo’s fondness for fitness was actually a welcome source of humor at his otherwise painful memorial service last July.
“The first several people who came up to speak all said they had met Gabriel at the gym,” chuckled Neville, who has maintained steady contact with Crispo’s friends and relatives since his passing. “It became a joke. Then some of the speakers started introducing themselves by saying, ‘I did not meet Gabriel at LA Fitness!’”
“Life is too short,” Neville said. “We try to live life in the moment, to live every day like it’s your last. Because you really don’t know when it is your time to go.”
Blanco, Crispo’s longtime partner, said she “lost my two loves” in the tragedy: “Gabriel and Niño.”
“Even though it has been a year, I still replay it in my mind like it was yesterday,” said Blanco. “It is still Thursday morning and I still think of the plans we had for later that day.” Blanco said she still revisits the incident and wonders what she could have been done to change its fatal outcome.
“Why didn’t we go a different direction?” she asked rhetorically. “Walk this way instead of that one? I miss him very much. I cannot understand why this happened, and I am trying to move on with life.”
Blanco said she at times wonders what Crispo would say to the boys involved in the street race that caused his death.
“He was a teacher,” Blanco said. “And he was a teacher of kids who were the same age as them. I often think about that. How would he have reacted to them as a teacher?”
She also hopes Crispo’s legacy will continue and that a lesson can be learned through his tragic death.
“Hopefully, kids will see that this is not a game,” Blanco said. “He lost his life because they decided to play without thinking of the consequences. I know his sister, mother and nephews are paying the consequences of this. His mother is never going to recover from this loss. I am certain about my pain. We are struggling every day to accept this loss and to understand that he is not with us anymore.”
She has found some small solace in the fact that Crispo and Niño died together.
“Sometimes the only thing that helps me is that he is not alone, he is with Niño,” Blanco said, her voice cracking. “He loved him very much. I don’t know why this happened, but they had to go together.”
Blanco has invited friends and acquaintances to gather at the death scene at 10:34 a.m. this Saturday, July 4, for a memorial service.
“Nothing is going to bring him back,” Blanco said. “I feel lost. We had all of these plans. To retire early, to live in Argentina. Those plans are all gone.”
Though the criminal matter was settled in Juvenile Court, a civil lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Crispo’s mother, who lives in Argentina.
Attorney Mark Hiepler, representing the plaintiff, said in a phone interview he expects to complete depositions of the defendants in a matter of weeks.
Hiepler said he is hoping for a jury trial where he would seek compensation “for the wrongful, negligent and careless taking of a life.”
“We will ask the jury to send a message and value life appropriately,” said Hiepler. “We hope to deter negligent and careless acts and thereby save and preserve lives in the future.”
A hearing for the two drivers is expected to take place later this month that will determine their progress in the sentencing. If so, Hiepler said he would hope to be in court by the end of the year.
Recalling the Grim Scene at Accident
Since July 4, 2019, fell on a Thursday, The Tribune was about to go to press and the staff was pleased it could include the results of the annual J.P. Blecksmith Memorial 5K that had taken place that morning. My cellphone rang, pulling my attention from the article I was composing about the event.
“Mitch, get over to Huntington Drive,” said the caller, a friend of mine. “There’s been a fatality. Bring your camera.”
That signaled the end to what is usually a genial, festive holiday in San Marino that typically lasts well into a fireworks-splashed night. Smoke and dust remained in the still air when I arrived at the crash site, where a couple of dozen people, some on official business and others just curious, meandered about. The scene where Gabriel Crispo had just died was extremely grim and disturbing, in stark contrast to the Blecksmith race where I had earlier interacted with almost 900 mostly joyous runners.
I also saw the young men who had driven the vehicles involved in the crash and remember one of them doing his best to hide from my camera, although I had been asked by Police Chief John Incontro not to include them in any photographs. It plainly, painfully seemed they had the proverbial weight of the world on their young shoulders, and for that I remember summoning a great deal of empathy. Soon I would be in Lacy Park for one of San Marino’s most festive days of the year, but I wondered when fireworks would ever again fly through the sky in their young lives, however symbolically.
My phone rang all day and when it didn’t, I was approached in Lacy Park by some of the hundreds and soon thousands who had heard the news. I even received a text message from a friend in Africa on safari, who had caught wind of the tragedy. Many at the park commented on how relatively fortunate it was that the accident hadn’t taken place near the finish line of the race and staging area for the parade that was to take place later that afternoon.
My lasting memory, however, is that of a San Marino resident who called me late one evening while I happened to still be in the office.
“Is there something I can do?” said my soft-spoken friend.
The next day, a check for $3,000 appeared in an envelope on my desk with a handwritten request that it be used to help fund the funeral expenses for a man she had never met. And though I would much rather forget the remainder of the ordeal, that is one element I will certainly always remember.
