The city of Oakland (and its insurance carrier) has agreed to payout $3.25 million to a woman who was seriously injured after she slammed into a pothole while riding her bike on Mountain Boulevard in the Oakland Hills in 2011.
According to her lawsuit filed in Alameda County, 35-year-old crash victim Dulcey Bower was wearing a helmet at the time, but the pitfall sent her head-first over the handlebars, sailing 21 feet before crashing into the pavement. The impact left her in a medically-induced coma for four days and she had to have seven operations to repair the damage to her head, face, teeth and jaw. She now sports titanium plates in her mouth.
The lawsuit also stated that the city of Oakland had failed to repair potholes along the stretch of Mountain Boulevard even though other cyclists had been complaining for years. The pothole was repaired four months after Bower's crash.
The same little corner of Oakland's upscale Montclair neighborhood saw another tragic event around a year later: in 2012, a woman in her 20s was found suffering from gunshot wounds and lying on the shoulder of the onramp to Highway 13.
