Sam Dent, a 41-year-old father of two and fish who had fished almost every body of water in the capital place, was struck by a vehicle and died on a risky Sacramento road. Feb. 26. Johnny Dent said his younger sibling was crossing San Juan Road to satisfy his 13-year-old boy, who was waiting for him.
At the crossroads of San Juan and Airport Streets in North Dakota, Sam was killed. The town has identified San Juan Road as part of the “high-injury system ” — the roads that have the most traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
Airport Road begins in San Juan, and the town has n’t put in a crosswalk to cross the main thoroughfare. The instant area does not have much growth, and on the west side of San Juan at that intersection, there are no homes or businesses: Largely, the road abuts the freeway.
On the west side of the road, which was where Sam once resided, is also home. The father died at the connection of two Sacramento crises: Illegal street facilities and a soaring homelessness epidemic.
A rider was seriously hurt at the same crossroads in 2021 as Sam was killed. Although San Juan has an exposed vehicle lane that leaves riders completely exposed to deadly velocity, the crossing is in a 40 miles zone. A research in Accident Analysis &; Prevention found that when a car is traveling 40 and colliding with a motorist. 6 speed, the pedestrian’s common risk of death is 50 %.
UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System shows that between 2012 and the close of 2023, six fatal accidents occurred on San Juan Road, including a devastating single-vehicle auto wreck next May in which Rayshawna Armstrong, 25, her 3-year-old son , Zayden Mangram, and 5-year-old Alex Leon were killed. The pilot and seven additional young children were seriously injured in the accident, including Armstrong’s child, Lajayla, then 6.
Just a few feet from the location of , their vehicle struck a tree. a dangerous 2017 single-car motion.
In two of the six fatal San Juan Road collapses mapped by the school, the subjects were pedestrians like Sam. On A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicles; San Juan Road at Ishi Circle in 2022. At Another commuter was killed in 2021 when she was struck by a vehicle on Bandon Way.
Vision Zero commitment
“Traffic fatalities and serious accidents are generally treatable, are a public health issue and must be successfully addressed, ” said Gabby Miller, a spokesperson for Sacramento’s Department of Public Works. Sacramento acknowledges that mortal life’s safety is top of its list. ”
Miller said that East Commerce Way will eventually become extended north to meet San Juan Road simply east of Airport Road, and the area will sign at that fresh crossing when it becomes available. Also, a cycle route that is completely separated from traffic — referred to as a “shared-use” way — has been approved for around three quarters of a mile of Airport Road northeast of San Juan. But, Miller said, that approved program now has no money.
Seven years ago , Sacramento announced a” Vision Zero” commitment to eliminate all city fatalities and serious injuries. The majority of these incidents can be prevented, according to research in various cities and nations.
Hoboken, New Jersey, announced in January that it had gone seven times without a traffic accident.
On a larger size , Sweden Between 2008 and the close of 2017, the number of fatalities on its streets was doubled. The European Commission ’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transit reported that in 2022, a complete of 227 folks died in traffic accidents throughout Scandinavia. of 10 million individuals. Sacramento witnessed 78 fatalities in a town of 525,000 in the same year, or six and a half times the charge.
In the decades since Sacramento leaders promised to reduce deaths like Sam’s, the California investment has made some advancements; The new addition of considerable stretches of parking-protected bicycle lanes in the city center has been highlighted by city spokesperson Miller.
In January, Karina Talamantes, the City Council agent for the area where Sam was struck by a car pressured the government to perpetrate$ 90,000 to the organizing and permitting phase of a project that may slow down vehicles in the ; San Juan Road south of the incident that claimed Sam’s life in May, there is a graph where Armstrong, Mangram, and Leon were all killed.
But, unlike Hoboken and Sweden , Sacramento has struggled to constantly account valuable road safety jobs, and the murders have continued. No income in the public fund is dedicated to this particular public health problem, despite the fact that the city generally relies on competitive grants to finance these improvements.
According to the Transportation Injury Mapping System, 186 pedestrians and cyclists died between the Vision Zero announcement and the end of 2023. Sacramento. According to information the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office obtained in the first month of 2024, four people were arrested; Mattie Nicholson, 56 , Kate Johnston, 55, Aaron Ward, 40, and Jeffrey Blain, 59 — were struck by a car and killed while walking or biking.
Like Sam, all of them were fatally struck on dangerous roads the city has previously identified as dangerous.
Two brothers against bullies
Sam Allan Dent was born in Iceland on Aug. 25, 1982, to Janice and Clifton Dent. His father worked for the  as a technical sergeant. Air Force and worked as an aircraft mechanic, a career that led the family to the Nordic country. Sam’s older brother Johnny said that when Sam was still a toddler, Clifton was assigned to McClellan Air Force Base, and the family moved to North Highlands.
Sam and Johnny are nine and a half years older than Johnny, and the age difference may make their relationship challenging. “Having the older brother who’s always over-protective is n’t always so great, ” Johnny said. “ I got told that a lot: ‘ I can handle myself. ’ ”
He recalls that when Sam was about 8 or 9 years old, some sixth graders were bullying him in school. Johnny said, “ I had to show up after school, pick him up, and they were trying to bully him, and I had to step up. ” Then in his late teens, he told the sixth graders to leave his brother alone, and, after that intervention, they did.
Johnny recalls that his brother had pressed him to say that he was n’t in need of assistance. He was constantly telling me. ‘ I can handle myself. ’ And I’m like, ‘No, it does n’t matter. I’m still gonna make sure you’re safe. ’ ”
Sam was out on his own for a while after John graduated high school and joined the Army. Clifton and Janice made the decision to relocate to  around the same time Sam was starting high school. East Nicolaus in Sutter County. The boy enrolled at East Nicolaus High School, where he played football.
When Johnny returned to the Sacramento things were different between the Dent brothers after the Dent brothers left the military in the middle of the 1990s. Johnny, then a young adult with young children, had an apartment of his own to host Sam.
“My mom would bring him over after school, drop him off, and we’d spend the weekend at my house, ” Johnny said. “We’d barbecue and play darts and just spend time together. ”
Johnny was better at darts. “ But on the pool table, he, hands-down, could beat me, ” he said.
Brutal shenanigans and difficult loss
After his high school graduation, Sam attended mechanic school in Arizona. He worked as a mechanic on rice farming equipment in  until he left the capital region. Sutter County.
He always said, “Everything else just falls around it once you understand the fundamentals of machinery, ” Johnny said. “It’s just a learning curve, and sometimes parts are just a little bit bigger. ”
Largemouth bass was their unwavering favorite, and the brothers adored hunting and fishing together. They would fish two or three times each week, occasionally.
“There’s not a pond in Sacramento — any body of water in Sacramento — that we have n’t finished, ” Johnny said. “ I mean McKinley Park, I mean the ponds behind Folsom High School. The entire Folsom neighborhood has little ponds. The river off of Manzanita, you know? We went everywhere. ”
The brothers even attempted to sneak onto a golf course in Auburn. “We knew from hearsay, ” Johnny said, “that the golf course had some really big largemouth bass in there. The brothers did n’t find any genuinely large fish in the water features of the golf course, but the incident caused them to laugh.
Over the last few years, Sam and Johnny had grown distant. Johnny remained close with Sam’s two sons, Connor and Sam II, now 13 and 16. The brothers rarely spoke, and Sam had made a number of bad decisions that Johnny did n’t like. Sam was living in the homeless camp at San Juan and Airport Roads when he was fatally struck with his 13-year-old son, whose mother had just dropped him off.
Sam’s life had become unstable, and it ’s unclear whether he would have been able to recover. Now, his family will never know.
But since Sam’s death, Johnny said he’s been feeling his presence.
“ I don’t know if you believe in the supernatural or not, ” Johnny said about a month after the crash, “but I can tell you right now, my brother’s spirit has been around me for the past three, four days. ”
It was a little hard to explain, he said, but he was convinced.
“ In his own way, he’s making me open up, ” Johnny said. So I’m attempting to deal with it. ”
He and his nephews have been texting images of Sam back and forth to keep him company.
In the groupchat, Johnny was also helping his teenage nephews tailor a playlist for their father’s funeral.
Johnny’s had good days and bad days. He’s muscling through the grief most of the time, and it ’s been complicated because the pair weren’t on good terms. Before his brother was killed on one of Sacramento’s dangerous roads, “ I had so much dislike for him for so long.
“But, ” Johnny said after a pause, “saying that, that ’s still my only brother. ”
Sam Allan Dent
Father of two and mechanic.
Age:41
Died :Feb. 26
Survived by: Brother Johnny Dent and sons Connor, 13, and Sam, 16.
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