Norwegian skater Joachim Lanham, 24, died Sept. 11 after a car hit him in Salina, Kansas, on day 22 of his New York-to-Los Angeles rollerblading trek. The sheriff's office identified the driver as an 82-year-old woman; the county attorney will decide whether to charge her.
The Saline County Sheriff's Office said Lanham was skating west on East Country Club Road when the woman, also traveling west, hit him. Lt. Scott Trembley said she knew she had struck something but was unsure what. She turned around but did not see Lanham; after noticing damage to her car at home, she returned to find police and paramedics at the scene.
An off-duty paramedic found Lanham at the roadside. He was taken to Salina Regional Health Center and then to the intensive care unit at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where he was in a medically induced coma for six days. His family said he had spoken to his parents about 40 minutes before the crash about what long-distance rollerblading meant to him; his brother Michael held his hand during the week and at the end.
