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Posted on Thu, Feb. 02, 2006

21-year-old motorcyclist dead in rush-hour wreck

BY THERESA BRADLEY
[email]tbradley@miamiherald.com[/email]

A 21-year-old motorcyclist died on a Don Shula Expressway exit ramp Thursday morning, as he sped to open his family's sub sandwich shop near Bird Road, Florida Highway Patrol officials said.

The ramp, which leads from northbound State Road 874 onto Bird Road, was closed to traffic for nearly three hours, as investigators inspected the scene and officials removed the boy's battered body.

Santos Luis Cruz, Jr., of Homestead, had been speeding his Suzuki GSX-1000 up the left side of the one-lane exit ramp, passing cars on the curve at such a high speed that his left knee nearly scraped the ground, witnesses told police.

He then cut suddenly into traffic, trying to move from the left shoulder across onto the right. Instead, he clipped the right back-bumper of a passing Toyota sedan, and was thrown headfirst 30-feet through the air into a guardrail.

''He was kind of trying to thread the needle between the traffic and he just miscalculated and struck the back of the car,'' said Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Pat Santangelo.

The driver of the 2003 Toyota, Maria E. Espinosa, 39, told police that she had felt a thud at the back of her car and looked out the right window -- just as Cruz's body, and then his bike, sailed forward past her through the air.

Cruz slammed headfirst into the guardrail, and then bounced off, landing on his head again in the middle of the road. Espinosa swerved to the left to avoid running over him, but it was too late.

Cruz was pronounced dead on the scene, where his brother and friends, many of them also on motorcycles, gathered this morning around 10 a.m., Santangelo said.

Cruz had been wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, but it didn't prevent him from suffering severe head injuries. ''Other factors were overwhelming,'' said Santangelo. ``Because of the speed and the trajectory, it wasn't able to save him.''

Cruz's death marked the 26th fatal traffic incident investigated by the Florida Highway Patrol in Miami-Dade County this year -- more than in any other Florida county, a report from the agency today showed.

© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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