For years the Tampa Bay area has owned the dubious title of being the most dangerous region in the country for pedestrians.
Perhaps a new category can be added to bicyclists.
Over the weekend, 30-year-old Kayoko Ishizuka, working as a research associate at USF's department of molecular medicine, was killed while riding home from the campus in a hit and run incident.
The assailant is still at large.
This incident comes just a few months Leroy Collins Jr. met his fate in a similar fashion, when an SUV hit and killed him in South Tampa, as well as three other incidents in the Bay area.
In honor of those slain cyclists, a bicycle ride will be held this Friday night at 7p.m.
A bicycle ride will be held at 7 PM Friday to honor the memories of five bicyclists killed in the past two months in the Tampa Bay area.
According to Alan Snel, a bicycle advocate in Tampa, The "Honor The Fallen Bike Ride" will leave from in front of the Seminole Heights Garden Center, 5800 Central Avenue just north of Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa.
The 15-mile bike ride, which Snel says will be "respectful" and will go from Seminole Heights to downtown Tampa and through Channelside and Ybor City and back to Seminole Heights.
Here are the names of those cyclists killed recently:
July 29: LeRoy Collins, Tampa. Retired Navy admiral.
Sept. 9: Joseph Dyals, Tampa. Elementary school teacher.
Sept. 11: Stephen Allen Ivey, New Port Richey. Died Sept. 13.
Sept. 12: Neil Alan Smith, St. Petersburg. Restaurant dishwasher. Died Sept. 18.
Sept. 25: Ishizuka Kayoko, Tampa. USF biochemistry Ph. D graduate
This article appears in Sep 23-29, 2010.