Man Found Guilty in 2009 Hit-and-Run Bicycling Case

In a recent ruling on a 2-year-old case, a jury found a hit-and-run driver guilty of driving under the influence, endangerment, and the manslaughter of a Queen Creek bicyclist.

Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, says that 55 year old Gary Lynn Foshee is to be sentenced March 23, before Maricopa County Superior Judge Cari Harrison.

The victim Russel Jenkins had been killed after being struck head-on on Ocotillo Road at roughly 2AM in Queen Creek. Deputies found that he had been heading eastbound on Ocotillo, along with 2 friends, when he was hit by a driver going the wrong way in the eastbound lanes.

The president of the Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists, Bob Beane, said that he is “pleased with the verdict. It’s what we expected. Our goal is to prevent these incidents from happpening in the first place. In this case, I feel really bad for the victim, the family and his friends.”

Beane’s organization focuses on safety education not only for bicyclists, but also for drivers and police investigators working on bicycle-related incidents.

Beane went on to say that even though prosecutors and police are very good at investigations for alcohol-related incidents, there is less attention paid to many other bicycle laws, including one where drivers need to provide a 3-foot safe zone when passing bicyclists, at all times possible.

He said that one particular Tucson attorney is currently working on developing an investigation course focusing on bicycles, along with funcing from the Maricopa Association of Governments, and that it will soon be available to all Valley law enforcement agencies.

One member of the coalition, Ed Beighe, has spent time tracking bicycle fatalities in Arizona, and said that in the year 2009 alone, there were 806 traffic-related deaths, 25 of which involved bicyclists. He also said that criminals charges were brought against 7 of those drivers, 5 of which had been under the influence of alcohol. He finished by saying that the evidence showed bicyclists were equally at fault as drivers for all of the fatal incidents.