ST. LOUIS COUNTY — A 25-year-old man has died after he fell from his motorized skateboard Sunday on Grant’s Trail in south St. Louis County.
County police said the man, Beyden Javier Mendieta-Olive, who lived on Morganford Road in St. Louis, died Tuesday at a hospital of injuries from the accident.
Police said the incident occurred late Sunday afternoon on the trail near Weber Road and Runyon Avenue. Police didn’t give further details.
Mendieta-Olive’s mother, Amanda Olive, said in an interview on Thursday that someone else using the trail discovered her son and notified first responders.
She said no one knows why her son fell off the skateboard. He had been riding skateboards for years, she said, sometimes using an electric skateboard, and had fallen previously.
An app that he used showed he was traveling at 28 mph, Olive said, which she regarded as “really fast.â€
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“We don’t know if the skateboard shorted out or if there were speed wobbles†or some other cause, she said.
Olive said he had head trauma and a brain stem injury.
He was wearing a skydiving helmet, she said, but it had been previously damaged.
He was “a big risk-taker,†she said.
Mendieta-Olive attended Gateway STEM High School in St. Louis, was an Army National Guard veteran and worked as a driver for an agency that transports seniors to medical appointments, Olive said.
A GoFundMe page has been set up by friends to raise money for the family for funeral expenses and other costs.
Lacey Buser, the organizer of the GoFundMe effort, said a benefit roller-skating event is scheduled for 9 p.m. Saturday at St. Louis Skatium, 120 East Catalan Street, in south St. Louis.
The GoFundMe page says he was “kind, compassionate and full of heart†and on the day of the accident was wearing a shirt with the message, “Do good, be nice.â€
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