PORT ANGELES — Would a helmet law have prevented the first skateboard park fatality in the United States in 2006 and only the second nationwide in two years?
Such a law works in Milton, a Puget Sound town of 6,000, where, acting Police Chief Jim Jayquiss said, the city’s successful, nationally recognized law is enforced by residents who call the cops if they see an unhelmeted skateboarder or scooter rider.
But the question also is one of many what-ifs being pondered by Port Angeles city leaders, skateboarders and families as a grieving community wrestles with the June 17 death of 14-year-old Port Angeles skateboarder Frank Russo.
Frank, in the summer cusp between seventh- and eighth grades, was not wearing a helmet when he died shortly after he hit his head while skateboarding at Port Angeles Skate Park on the day before Father’s Day.
“It’s just a bad dream,” his stepfather, William Feeney, said Thursday, as the family prepared for the teenager’s funeral Friday.
“I wish it would go away.”
