Westside Cities Start Campaign for Safer Streets

As a campaign to reduce the number of pedestrian fatalities began Friday, there was joking and laughter in one Westside community--and anger and tears in another.

In West Hollywood, colorfully costumed mimes and a parade of municipal leaders gathered to launch a 1 1/2-year “Walkable Westside” safety program for that city and for Santa Monica, Culver City and Beverly Hills.

Various grants will pay for the $396,000 education program, which will use posters, billboards and orange-suited actors to remind Westside motorists to pay attention behind the wheel. It will also urge pedestrians to pay attention when they are crossing streets--even in marked crosswalks.

At the same time, a Pacific Palisades lawyer was in a Santa Monica courtroom facing charges that she struck and killed two women as they walked across a busy Santa Monica street 11 months ago.

Cheryl Chadwick, 46, was charged with two misdemeanor manslaughter counts after the crash that fatally injured Mariya Diment, 70, and Liya Murkes, 71, as they crossed Ocean Avenue last June 23.

Police allege that Chadwick was talking on her cellular phone when her car hit the two women, both Russian immigrants who were headed for a nightly stroll along the beach. After the crash, investigators contend that Chadwick refused to get out of her car and refused to talk to police at the scene.

Relatives of the dead women sat on one side of the courtroom Friday as a pretrial settlement session was being held. They were seething over a preliminary probation report that recommended that Chadwick receive no jail time--only a sentence of 50 hours of community service, giving traffic school lectures on the dangers of talking on a phone while driving.

Chadwick was sitting on the other side of the courtroom next to her husband, Timothy Harris, who is also a lawyer. She was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue while he put a comforting hand on her knee.

In response to pleas from the victims’ relatives, a new probation report--one calling for a tougher punishment--was compiled. On Friday, that sent prosecutor David Fairweather, a deputy Santa Monica city attorney, and defense lawyer Richard Hutton into the judge’s chambers to huddle with court Commissioner Roberta Kyman.

Kyman instructed Chadwick to return to court June 14, when it will be determined whether she receives a sentence of 120 days of house arrest or 90 days in jail.

That brought a sense of relief to the victims’ relatives. They regrouped in the courthouse hallway and there were tears there, too, as they talked of their families’ losses--and their shock at the accident’s aftermath.

Chadwick had remained in her car after the accident, using her cellular phone to call her husband. She had refused to talk with officers when they sought to question her, according to the police report. She had not undergone any sobriety testing and only communicated with police 17 days later--by fax.

In that fax, Chadwick had denied being on the phone at the time of the crash. “In the face of this horrible accident, I became overwhelmed with gripping fear that the people who had been hit would die. I was overwhelmed,” Chadwick wrote. “I felt as if the inside of my car was a shell that protected me from the horror outside. I could not force myself to get out.”

Alla Diment, daughter of Mariya Diment, said Chadwick would have faced more serious felony charges if police had detected evidence of alcohol on her breath. Police say there were no signs of intoxication and they had no probable cause to demand a blood-alcohol test.

“She locked herself in the car for more than an hour. She closed her eyes and her mouth and never gave a statement to police,” said Diment, a West Hollywood bookkeeper.

Natalya Nurumend, a West Hollywood resident who is the daughter of Liya Murkes, recounted the heartbreak the incident has visited upon the victims’ families.

Ten miles away on the roof of the Pacific Design Center’s parking garage, meantime, the “Walkable Westside” program was being launched. There were short speeches by Beverly Hills Mayor Mark Egerman, Santa Monica Mayor Michael Feinstein, Culver City Mayor Edward Wolkowitz and West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tem Sal Guarriello, and by police officials from the four cities.

Officials suggested the busy Westside--clogged with cars--is a dangerous place for unwary pedestrians. Accident statistics compiled by the state for 1999 showed eight fatal pedestrian accidents in the four cities, plus an additional 101 pedestrian deaths in Los Angeles.

Culver City’s Wolkowitz said: “This campaign will blend a little humor and intrigue. There’s a touch of the moving violator in all of us.”