HOUSTON – On Tuesday morning, a man killed in a hit-and-run crash on Westheimer will be laid to rest at Houston National Cemetery.
According to the family of Jerry Young, the 68-year-old man and father of two died Friday, Sept. 16 while attempting to cross Westheimer Road in Houston.
“It was dark. They hit him. Why didn’t they just stop? Why did they have to drag him for a mile and destroy him that way? That was so disrespectful, he’s a human being,” said Jerilynn Johns, the mother of Jerry’s children. “He served in the military in the 70s. He was stationed in Korea and Germany.”
Divorced for decades, the two met as teenagers.
“The mourning process I can feel a piece of my heart is gone,” said Johns. “Jerry was my first love. I met him when I was 16 and we married in 1980, had two children, Jana and Jeffry. He was someone who was very special.”
Throughout his life, he struggled with mental illness and substance abuse and was homeless at times, according to his family.
According to Houston Police Department, there have been nearly 21,000 hit-and-run crashes in Houston this year. Of those, more than 85% have been solved. The person who hit Jerry has not been found.
Jeffery Young is Jerry’s son.
“We believe justice should be served and finding the person is where justice begins.”
The City of Houston’s Vision Zero Annual Report 2021 shows the streets where the most serious crashes happened. These streets are called high-injury networks. Most are in lower-income communities. The stretch of Westheimer Road where Jerry was hit and killed is highlighted in red which means it is a priority location that has had two or more traffic deaths.
A report by the non-profit group Smart Growth America states people of color, particularly native and Black Americans, are more likely to die while walking than any other race or ethnic group and people walking in lower-income areas are killed at far higher rates. The non-profit ranks Houston, the Woodlands and Sugar Land as the 36th most dangerous metro area in the country when it comes to pedestrian risk.
Jackie Rodgers is Jerry’s sister.
“You want to find out why. Honestly, at my age, we have had a lot of death. Nothing really brings you closure. It just doesn’t. We would like to see justice and ask why. We would like to know why,” Jackie said.
According to the city of Houston, 1.3 miles of roadway within the High Injury Network had safety improvements in 2021. This makes up less than 1% of those roads.
So far this year, 76 pedestrians have been hit and killed in Harris County, according to TxDOT.
