Vashon, WA : Two well-known skateboarders were involved in a suspected DUI crash on Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Two well-known skateboarders were involved in a suspected DUI crash on Vashon Island Wednesday night, which resulted in one fatality and one arrest.
According to King County jail records, Cory Kennedy, 26, a professional skateboarder who lives on Vashon and has been involved in the island skateboarding community for years, was arrested early Thursday morning on suspicion of vehicular homicide. He was booked into the Seattle Correctional Facility, but released Friday pending a charging decision, according to documents from the King County Prosecutor’s Office.
One of his passengers, 45-year-old Preston Maigetter, also a longtime professional skateboarder and a video producer for Thrasher magazine, died at the scene of the Wednesday night crash. A second passenger was transported to Harborview Medical Center and was treated and released.
An early Thursday morning press release from the King County Sheriff’s office stated that just before 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, a homeowner in the area near where Bank Road turns into Thorsen Road, heard a “loud crash” in front of his residence. When sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene, they found a single-vehicle accident where a car had collided with a guardrail and tree — authorities believe Kennedy may have failed to negotiate the sharp curve.
News of Maigetter’s passing began to circulate Thursday, and Thrasher owner Tony Vitello posted this remembrance on the company’s site that day:
“Nothing is more heartbreaking than hearing news that a loved one has passed away. It hits you like a ton of bricks. As I’m writing this now, I still haven’t moved an inch past the phase of shock, and I’m positive it’s because there’s no way Preston Maigetter has left us. There isn’t a stronger, more brimming-with-life person on this planet. I’m certain of it. Preston was everything you could ever want in a human being. He loved his family and friends and skateboarding and life like no other person I’ve ever known. Preston is the guy you’d bring along if you were stranded on a island. He’d find the food, keep you safe, and eventually when search parties came to the rescue you’d tell them to turn back.”
Maigetter, known in the skateboarding community as P-Stone, leaves behind his wife and two young children.
Kennedy is sponsored by Girl Skateboards and is on the company’s skateboarding team. He also released a Nike skateboarding shoe in 2015. Girl Skateboards posted a remembrance for Maigetter on its Instagram page.
“There was never a man with a more positive outlook on absolutely everything,” the post says. “You will always be with us, Big Dog. This is just too tragic. Our hearts go out to his family, friends and all the lives he touched all over the world. Rest in Peace P-Stone.”
Meanwhile, news of the crash began traveling in the skating community on Thursday, including the skatincommunity on Vashon, and islanders recalled Kennedy’s contributions to Vashon’s skateboarding scene. Kennedy, a Lake Stevens, Washington, native, regularly skated with young island skateboarders and served as a judge during a competition to mark the dedication of the Burton Adventure Recreation Center’s (BARC) skate bowl in August 2015.
Islander Jenni Wilke’s family has been involved with Vashon’s skate park for years; her son Simon often skates there.
She said Kennedy began travelling from Tacoma to Vashon to skate before the skate bowl was built in 2014. He used to come and skate in the indoor park when the weather was bad. Once the bowl was built, it became one of his favorite places to skate and he would come over two or three times a week to skate there.
“The boys recognized him right away,” Wilke said.
She said Kennedy has always seemed happy to hang out and goof around with the kids.
“He was just always really accessible to the kids. It was never, ‘I am too cool for you,’” she said. “He was a happy go lucky guy, like a big kid himself. He is a pro skateboarder, so surprise, surprise.”
She recalled that during one really hot day in the summer of 2015, Kennedy went to Raab’s Lagoon with several island families to swim and cool off. That was the first day he started to talking about moving to Vashon. She said news of the crash and the grieving process is surreal in part because of how well known Kennedy is in the skating world, but not not known to many islanders.
“You knew this celebrity, and there are people all over the world weighing in,” she said, adding, “It’s horrible, and it feels really heavy for these kids.”
Wilke also credits the young skaters on Vashon for not adding to the growing conversation online at the early stage of the news.
“The local kids were all respectful about what they knew and did not put anything online about it,” she said.
Marc Brown, an island father of two teenage boys who skate at BARC regularly, said Kennedy has been“just really nice and really giving” and would often hang out and skate with the teens. He would bring extra shoes from his Nike sponsorship down to the bowl and give them to Brown’s son Matt, who has the same size feet as Kennedy.
“It was jaw-dropping for my kids because here’s this pro skater that they see in magazines and videos hanging out at the skate park and skating with them,” he said. “He was involved with the kids. He wasn’t this standoff pro athlete doing his own thing. He skated with them. There was no attitude to the kid.”
Like Wilke, he said that while Kennedy has only been living on the island for “a couple years,” he has been coming to Vashon for several years. Brown says it was because he could skate relatively unknown.
“If he went off-island to skate parks, he’d have a crowd around him. He would get privacy out here,” he said. “He wouldn’t get attention other than from the local kids. He would just be one of them.”
Source :
Prominent skateboarders involved in fatal Vashon Island crash