Man gets prison in S.D. bicyclist’s death

A motorist who fled the county after striking a bicyclist in San Diego last summer — leading to the victim’s death just over a month later — was sentenced Wednesday to four years in state prison.

Mauricio Armando Flores, 30, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a felony hit-and-run charge in connection with the crash on West Washington Street on Aug. 21, 2020, that killed Dan Sweeney, 65.

Sweeney died Oct. 5 at UC San Diego Medical Center, according to testimony from a preliminary hearing in San Diego Superior Court and an obituary posted in the Coronado Times.

Police and prosecutors said Flores was driving a 2005 Dodge Caravan that struck the victim from behind. They said Flores fled the county without informing law enforcement of his involvement in the crash.

Video footage shot by a witness shows the driver of a van, which had Georgia license plates, pulling to a stop after the collision and getting out along with a female passenger.

In the video, the pair are seen walking over to where the injured man was lying on the side of the road. After looking at him for a few moments, the driver pulled the bent bicycle out from under the front of the van and set it aside, then got back into the vehicle along with his companion and drove off.

About one week after the crash, San Diego police posted Flores’ and his passenger’s names and photos online and asked for the public’s assistance in locating them.

According to the California Highway Patrol, an off-duty Kern County CHP officer who had seen a flier about the hitand-run case came across the Caravan while riding his motorcycle in Lake Isabella, an unincorporated community about 35 miles northeast of Bakersfield.

Three days later, another CHP officer spotted the van — now bearing Vermont plates — in a parking lot outside a Vons store in Lake Isabella and called sheriff ’s deputies, who arrested Flores and his passenger, CHP spokesman Robert Rodriguez said.