Newspaper Story from October 5th, 2005

When they took my sons life, they should have taken mine as well...

www.registerguard.com © The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

May 31, 2005

Crash kills bicyclist, 23; teens charged

The Associated Press
PORTLAND - A 23-year-old bicyclist was hit and killed early Sunday morning by a teenager whom Portland police said may have been driving while drunk.

Dana Abdullah, 18, struck Noah Jacob Madison Cardamon from behind, Portland Police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said.

The force of the collision sent Cardamon into a car parked at the curb, police said. He was not wearing a helmet and died at the scene, Schmautz said.

According to police, Abdullah originally told officers that she and passenger Sheena Dawn Foster had been driving past and noticed the wounded bicyclist.

After being questioned by police, Abdullah eventually confessed to authorities, witnesses said. She has been charged with one count of criminally negligent homicide.

Foster, 19, was charged with one count of hindering prosecution and one count of interfering with a police officer.

Investigators believe that Abdullah and Foster ``took steps to conceal evidence prior to officers arriving at the scene,'' Schmautz said.

He also said investigators believe that alcohol was a factor in the collision.

Foster told reporters she and Abdullah had just left a bar and were on their way to a friend's house. She said she doesn't remember the car hitting the bicyclist. ``I wish I could take it back ... but I don't know what happened to take anything back,'' Foster said.

Portland Tribune Article

For 4 cyclists, life’s ride ended in a flash



For 4 cyclists, life’s ride ended in a flash

By JACOB QUINN SANDERS Issue date: Fri, Dec 30, 2005
The Tribune

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Four bicyclists died on Portland streets in 2005.
It’s not an unusual number — four died in 2003, five in 2001.
They were killed in all parts of the city — North, Northeast, Southeast, downtown. Only one of the four was determined by Portland police to have been at fault in the crashes that took their lives. And in keeping with the average modern-day Portlander, none of them was born in the city.
But even in bike-mad Portland, it can be easy to forget those riders once had names, faces, friends and families. Aside from the memorial rides organized in their honor, there is little public accounting of who they were.
These are their stories.
• • •
Noah Cardamon could play the didgeridoo.
He learned it when he was 9 after he saw a San Francisco street musician play one. His first one was homemade, from PVC pipe, which he used until his father bought him a real one for Christmas.
His grandmother home-schooled him for several years in Corvallis, where he moved after being born with the aid of a midwife at a house in Sunnyvale, Calif. As a child, he loved to draw. He also loved animals.
He moved in with his single father, Thomas Cardamon Jr., when he was 8.
Only 23 when he died, Cardamon never finished high school but always seemed to have a job, sometimes more than one. Video store clerk, bartender, Beaterville Cafe waiter.
He kept his hair cut short, which only made his brown eyes look bigger. His looks reflected his mother’s heritage: half-black and part American Indian.
He kept journals that his family would not see until after his death.
“We didn’t really know until we read his journals how talented he was,” his father said.
He struggled with alcohol, his father said — working as a bartender (wrong, he was a cook at Biddy McGraw's) didn’t help — and planned to quit his jobs and take work fishing in Alaska for the summer.
“I found the list of clothes and supplies he was going to need in his messenger bag,” Thomas Cardamon said.
He planned on going to a school for bicycle mechanics in Ashland after he got back from Alaska.
Cardamon loved his bike, built it himself from the frame up.
And the messenger bag his father found went with him everywhere...
Two teenage girls in the car initially told police they found Cardamon already on the ground, later admitting being involved in the accident.“I still don’t know if Noah was alive after they hit him or what his last words may have been,” Thomas Cardamon said. “I wish I knew exactly what happened.” Comment: What took 23 years of love and kindness to raise into a beautiful human being, was taken away in seconds by unfeeling strangers. I hope that someday they find some compassion for the life they took.
• • •