The man who drove his car onto a sidewalk on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd and killed a man who was standing just outside a Subway sandwich shop on NE Jarrett last week, has also died. Portland Police say 60-year-old Curtis Palmer died at the hospital on Tuesday.
Palmer drove his Ford Escape SUV about three blocks after hitting 49-year-old DaRon Craig (and nearly hitting Craig’s 12-year-old son), eventually coming to a stop when he slammed his car head-on into other drivers after he jumped a planted center median just north of NE Ainsworth.
According to a story in The Oregonian, Craig was a beloved family man who raised five children of his own and took in three others, “all of whom he treated as his own,” his ex-wife Angeline McKinney-Craig said.
McKinney-Craig has appealed to the community for help after this unfathomable tragedy struck her family. In a GoFundMe post, she said her family is “shattered” and that their son who was with McKinney-Craig when he was struck is “struggling deeply with grief and guilt” as he processes the trauma.
“DaRon was a devoted father who loved all of his children deeply,” McKinney-Craig wrote in the post. “No matter the distance or circumstances, his love for each of them was constant, unconditional, and the core of who he was. His children were his pride, his joy, and the light of his life.” So far the family has raised nearly $25,000.
In an update shared on Tuesday, McKinney-Craig said a fire tore through the family’s home, furthering their loss and taking away many of the memories they had with their late father.
Police haven’t released any further information about what might have caused Palmer to lose control of his car and cause so much damage to this family and the community. Three days after this tragic episode of traffic violence, PPB said there were two more serious injury crashes in northeast Portland — one of them was just 0.6 miles away from where Craig was hit. Both of the crashes on August 10th happened in the very early morning hours, involved drivers that were going too fast for conditions and were suspected of being impaired by drugs and/or alcohol. Later that same day, someone driving a truck on the Morrison Bridge accelerated into the back of a bicycle rider, threw the rider onto the ground and injured them, then sped away. Police are still searching for that driver and I’m working to find out the latest information about the investigation and the condition of the rider.
