A Norwegian man attempting to rollerblade across America was killed in a hit-and-run crash while skating through Kansas.
Joachim Lanham, 24, was on day 22 of his cross-country rollerblading trek from New York to Los Angeles when he was hit by a car in Salina, about 175 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 5, the Wichita Eagle reported.
An off-duty paramedic discovered Lanham lying on the side of the road. He was taken to Salina Regional Health Center before he was taken to the intensive care unit at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas.
Lanham was in a medically induced coma for six days before he died from his injuries on September 11.
His family wrote on his Instagram account that “his brother Michael was with him holding his hand throughout the week and at the very end.”
The Saline County Sheriff’s Office said that Lanham was skating west on East Country Club Road when an 82-year-old woman driving westbound struck him with her car.
“She knew she struck something. She just wasn’t sure what,” Lieutenant Scott Trembley said.
The woman turned around to see what she had hit, but didn’t see Lanham. However, when she returned home, she noticed damage to her car and returned to find police and paramedics at the scene.
Lanham’s family said that about 40 minutes before the fatal crash, he had a long phone call with his parents, telling them how much long-distance rollerblading meant to him.
“His wild adventures, they meant the world to him,” his family wrote on social media.
The Saline County Attorney’s Office will decide whether to charge the 82-year-old in the crash, the sheriff’s office said.
