18-year-old bicyclist killed in Friday-night 'Critical Mass' ride

NBC-LA

An 18-year-old man was killed when he lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a wall on the UCLA campus in Westwood, police said Friday.

An 18-year-old man was killed when he lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a wall on the UCLA campus in Westwood, police said Friday.

The rider was declared dead at UCLA Medical Center, where he was taken by private ambulance after the crash at 9:50 p.m. Friday on De Nave Drive and Charles E. Young Drive, said Los Angeles Police Sgt. C. Clark of the West Traffic Division, which was investigating the accident.

Jerico Culata of Los Angeles was participating in the Critical Mass ride when he lost control of his bike and slammed into a masonry wall, Clark said.

Culata went wide on a downhill curve, his friend told a photographer outside the hospital.

Several other riders also crashed, but none was seriously hurt, according to Culata's friend.

The last-Friday-of-the-month ride, held in about 300 cities worldwide, is an outgrowth of the Critical Mass movement started in San Francisco in 1992.

The name of the ride refers to the number of riders needed to dominate streets.

Run-ins with police during Critical Mass rides are not uncommon, since some riders apparently embrace the night time tours as a form of protest.

Some of the riders are on bikes with no brakes, said a rider who participated in the Friday night event in Westwood. It was not immediately known whether the teen who died was on a bike with no brakes