In the wake of a heartbreaking hit-and-run in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood, a grieving father grapples with the loss of his only son, 31-year-old David Bridges Jr., who was tragically killed in the early hours of February 8. The young man's father, stricken with the profound depths of sorrow unique to a parent's loss, spoke to KRON4, expressing an unfathomable void left by the sudden demise of his child. "That was everything I had — my son," Bridges said, his words mirroring a hollow reverberation of unanswerable loss.
David, cherished by friends and known for his outgoing spirit, had been visiting one such companion in the city when his life was abruptly snuffed out by an unidentified motorist who fled the scene, leaving Bridges on the cold pavement and a father in the throes of perpetual solace seeking; "All I know is they took my only baby, my only child I had ever in life and now it’s all gone, now I’m really by myself," the father told KRON4 in an anguish-filled statement. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department continues its search for the driver responsible, offering a glimmer of hope for justice in what has become the darkest chapter of a father's narrative.
The aftermath of the tragedy also brings to light the unbearable fiscal responsibilities that accompany sudden loss, as the elder Bridges reaches out to his community for assistance in bearing the weight of funeral expenses and the cost of cremation. A personal GoFundMe campaign narrates his plight and calls for solidarity: "I’ve tried hard to come to terms with the fact that I’ve received my last hug, heard my last 'I love you,' and seen his last smile and it's been the hardest thing I've ever had to do." The father, earnest in his endeavor, plans to share his love and the memory of his son by gifting family members a piece of David transformed into a tangible remembrance — necklaces containing his ashes.
The public plea for assistance, however, also comes with a fervent appeal for information that might lead to the apprehension of the individual who has left a life interrupted and a father's heart shattered; "You can’t let a killer keep driving a car, you need to turn that killer in because there’s going to be more people he’s going to kill," Bridges asserted to KRON4, voicing the potentially recurrent danger posed by the at-large driver. For anyone with information on the hit-and-run, the San Francisco police have made an open call for such details that could bring closure to a family left reeling in the wake of an irrevocable tragedy.
