MISSION VIEJO : Helmet Use Urged After Boy’s Death

Bicycle safety programs were tailor-made for rambunctious children such as 9-year-old Jamie Sides.

Spunky and full of life, Jamie enjoyed running, swimming and teasing his older sister. But the energetic youngster loved nothing more than pedaling his bike around his Mission Viejo neighborhood.

Last month, bike safety was the focus at the launching of an ambitious Sheriff’s Department child safety program at Viejo Elementary School, where Jamie and his schoolmates surprised teachers and police by spontaneously chanting the sheriff’s catchy “Kids Count Too” slogan several times during the assembly.

But somewhere along La Mancha Street on March 25 around 11 a.m., the lessons he learned that day may have been lost.

Less than 100 feet from his front door at the corner of La Mancha and Nublado streets, Jamie was hit by a van while riding his bike. On Wednesday, he died from massive brain trauma suffered when his head struck a curb in front of his house.

Looking back, his father said a helmet could have saved his son’s life.

“He had a broken arm, a broken leg and internal injuries,” Jim Sides said, “but he would have survived that. He died from brain injuries because his head hit a curb. Jamie wouldn’t have died if he had been wearing a helmet.”

On Thursday, more than a hundred friends, relatives, teachers and schoolchildren turned out at the Rancho Capistrano Community Church in San Juan Capistrano to pay their last respects to the boy and to speculate on what happened.

“You can have program after program for the kids, but it still can’t stop a horrible tragedy like this from happening,” said Viejo Elementary School Principal Dick Campbell.

Jamie’s death was the second involving a Mission Viejo youngster within a two-week period. A week before, a 12-year-old boy was struck and killed by a car while walking across Crown Valley Parkway.

In the latest accident, what stunned family, friends and others is that the 47-year-old woman who was driving the van that struck Jamie has two children who attended Viejo Elementary with Jamie.

A well-liked PTA mother, her involvement is making the situation as hard to handle for parents as for Jamie’s classmates, who Campbell said are recovering well from the initial shock of the accident.