Street Light Goes Up After Boy’s Near-Fatal Accident

The new traffic signal at Walnut Grove Avenue and Wells Street in Rosemead is just one source of thankfulness these days for Vidal and Marilu Palacios. Another is the continuing recovery of their son, Gustavo, 14, who was run down by a motorist in the intersection on Dec. 5.

The signal, at an increasingly congested intersection, had long been wanted by residents of this neighborhood just north of the San Bernardino Freeway. After the accident, a community outcry led to installation of the signal.

Since the accident, Gustavo has been confined to three hospitals, struggling for five weeks to pull out of a coma and then to regain his physical and mental abilities.

Today, 106 days after the accident, doctors at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey are planning to send the youth home.

“To us, this has all been a miracle,” said his mother, Marilu, a teacher with the Covina Valley Unified School District. “Three months ago when the doctors told us he might die, we never even dreamed things might turn around so quickly.”

Gustavo is in good spirits. He is on a daily therapy program that includes speech lessons and physical exercise. He often rushes through the first few activities so he can get to his favorite-riding a training bike around the hospital grounds.

Despite the positive news, doctors cannot say whether Gustavo will be able to recover enough to return to a regular high school. In his current condition, he would require special schooling.

Gustavo was on his way home from wrestling practice when he was hit in a crosswalk by a van going 45 to 50 m.p.h. He was thrown 76 feet, according to the Sheriff Department’s report.

He was initially treated at County-USC Medical Center for injuries that included a broken collarbone and hipbone, a brain injury, vision impairment, and neuromuscular impairment caused by the contraction of his body into a fetal position. He underwent brain surgery and was kept in casts for three months to straighten out his arms and legs.

Deputies have waited to see how Gustavo’s recovery would go before citing the driver, Michael Lynn Morrison, 27, of San Gabriel. They have said they plan to cite Morrison for failure to yield to a pedestrian.

After the accident, a neighborhood furor erupted at the next Rosemead City Council meeting. About 150 friends, neighbors and classmates--many in tears--jammed the council chambers demanding that the city do something about the intersection, where a 54-year-old man had been killed by a hit-and-run driver a month before.

After calling for a special meeting to consider the matter, the council voted 3 to 0 in favor of installing the $90,000 traffic signal.

“I’m really glad they put that up there,” Gustavo said from his hospital room. “Now, maybe nobody else will get hit there.”

Gustavo knows about the accident because his parents told him. But he has no memory of the hours leading up to it or the several weeks that followed.

He talks about it easily, without depression or bitterness.

“When my mom and dad told me I got hit by a car, it was kind of weird,”he said during a recent interview at the hospital. “I just thought I’d fallen down the stairs.”

And he has not given up on any of the goals he had set before the accident. He still wants to attend UCLA to study music, which he has come to love through playing clarinet in the Rosemead High School and Muscatel Junior High School bands.

“We bought him a UCLA cap when he started coming out of the coma,” his father said.

Gustavo also remembers all of the family members who have been by his side every day since the accident: his parents, his three brothers, Vidal, Diego and Mauricio, and his grandmother, Connie Martinez--all of whom will be coordinating their work schedules around taking care of Gustavo once he has returned home.

“It’s because of our strong family bond that the doctors are letting him come home so early,” said his mother. “They know we’ll be there 24 hours a day to take care of him until he recovers from this.”

Gustavo does not see himself as a victim, he said. In fact, sometimes he feels more like a celebrity. At Rosemead High School, Jan. 17 was Gustavo Palacios Day and the school raised more than $1,000 from its students and booster clubs.

Gustavo was also the subject of a story on the school’s “Rosemead Report” closed-circuit cable television program, as well as several articles in the Panther’s Tale student newspaper.

“He’s been walking around the hospital lately asking people: ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?’ ” said his mother. “ ‘I was on TV the other day,’ he says.”