Santa Clarita, We Have a Youth Problem — And Parents Are the Solution
One 17-year-old’s bad decision destroyed two families. Too many parents are still making the same mistake.
Every parent in this city is one decision away from heartbreak. What we choose for our kids shapes whether our community can go home to their beds — or ends up in Eternal Valley.
I think every parent of a teen should ensure their child knows what these accidents actually look like. One 17-year-old’s decision last Friday night crushed two families. Not just the Ortiz family — the kid’s own family is torn up, too. And it’s not out of the realm that parents can find themselves facing devastating civil liability after something like this. Both sides are paying for one teenager’s choices.
I was going to write this last week. It took me a minute to even wrap my head around what happened to the Ortiz family. These tragedies just keep happening in our community, and each one hits harder than the last.
Just last year, the intersection of Newhall Ranch and Bouquet Canyon — right where this latest horror unfolded — saw 11 collisions. Part of a stretch of Bouquet Canyon Road that has seen a steady climb in serious crashes and ranks among the deadliest roads in the state. Against this backdrop, what happened next feels heartbreakingly predictable.
This past Friday night, February 6, at 11:15 p.m. — just 15 minutes after California’s provisional driver curfew for minors kicked in — a 17-year-old Hart High School senior came flying down Bouquet Canyon Road in a massive truck, allegedly impaired, and slammed into a family heading home from church at the intersection of Newhall Ranch and Bouquet Canyon.
This could have been any one of us. That night, the unlucky people who suffered the consequences were Genry and Patty Ortiz (some outlets also reported the mom as Sylvia Lux—likely a legal or maiden name), devoted parents and pillars of Ebenezer Church. Genry was the kind of dad who always volunteered for every church potluck and never missed one of Erin’s band concerts. Patty dedicated her weekends to organizing the neighborhood toy drive every December, ensuring no child ever felt left out at Christmas. They were killed. Their 25-year-old daughter, Erin, is fighting for her life with what her family calls “life-altering injuries.” Two lives erased in an instant. One young woman’s future was shattered. A family ripped apart.
We know we have this problem. We’ve built a memorial to it.
We are the community that has a section of Central Park called the Youth Grove, with 123 tree stumps representing youth who have been killed in traffic-related accidents. Think about that for a minute. What other city has so many dead kids that we needed a permanent memorial in our main park?
The California Highway Patrol used to hit the high schools right in the gut with a program called “Every 15 Minutes.” For two straight days, it turned our high schools into living nightmares. Kids got pulled out of class every fifteen minutes — one for every person who dies in an alcohol-related crash in America that day. They watched a staged wreck right on campus: twisted metal, fake blood, sirens blaring, “parents” getting the phone call no one ever wants to receive. Then came the mock funerals and the retreat where students wrote letters to their “dead” friends and sat with real families who had actually buried their own children.
It was brutal on purpose. It was supposed to scar them — so they’d never make that choice.
It was the spiritual successor to the old Red Asphalt films the CHP used to show back in the ’60s through 2006 — those graphic, unflinching crash videos that the LA Times once called “the Reefer Madness of driving: Forget trying to reason with teenagers, just scare ‘em.” I might be old-school on this: everyone on the road should know what driving recklessly looks like. Look at the picture above. It is a miracle that anyone walked away from that car at all. Every 15 Minutes took that same shock value and made it personal. And for years, it actually worked here in Santa Clarita. It changed how a generation of our kids thought about getting behind the wheel.
The program still exists statewide. But we haven’t seen it locally since 2019. Whether it was funding, priorities, or something else, the result is the same. We stopped doing something that once made an impact.
I’m not here to say every bad thing requires a new law. Tragedies happen. But this wasn’t a “tragedy.” This was the predictable, preventable outcome of a culture in Santa Clarita where too many parents let their kids act as if they’re invincible — and treat the law as optional.
This is directly connected to another growing problem. eBikes.
This isn’t just about one crash. It’s about the broader culture we’ve allowed to grow — where speed is normalized, rules feel optional, and too many parents assume “it won’t happen to my kid.” Some of these electric motorcycles that kids are riding through our community are not cheap. Take the E-Ride Pro SS 3.0 — $5,000 with a top speed of 62 mph. You wouldn’t give your 12-year-old an electric Honda Civic; it is no different from giving your child an illegal e-motorcycle that can go 60+ miles per hour. A couple of kids on one of these machines led CHP Newhall on a high-speed chase while wearing a bicycle helmet. What 13-year-old has five grand lying around? These purchases are adult decisions — and they carry adult-level responsibility.
When kids grow up learning that rules don’t apply to them on a bike, that mindset doesn’t magically disappear when they get a driver’s license.
A few months ago, I watched a kid on an e-bike blow through a non-lighted crosswalk with just a sign. He yelled to his friend that they had to stop for us. A truck stopped abruptly about 3 feet from him, bumper at head level. He would have been killed instantly. These machines are a danger not only to others but to the kids riding them.
Just search “ebike” on Nextdoor, and you’ll find a community at its breaking point—parents enabling this chaos, kids treating our trails and streets with reckless disregard for everyone.
These aren’t “kids being kids.” These are children being handed adult-level machines with zero adult-level supervision.
The sheriff has started responding — last week alone, they impounded seven more illegal e-motorcycles in a single operation in response to community complaints. Those parents now have to explain their decisions in court. There was a meeting in June to discuss e-bikes, where Lt. Barclay (Now Captain) was asked about the impounds, and he said they were mostly due to stopping street takeovers. It’s alarming that our community is now at the point where we’re dealing with street takeovers. But one bust isn’t enough. Most of these parents don’t even know these bikes are illegal on public roads and trails.
So, what can be done?
Hart District: Contact parents to inform them that bikes are not allowed on campus and that any brought to campus will be confiscated and turned over to the Sheriff’s Department. Yes, I checked, and students are riding these eBikes and eDirt Bikes to school. Seems like an easy one to me.
The City: Do better. Put up more signs. Install cameras in the hot spots. Start logging these groups of kids on illegal bikes. Create a simple way for people to submit video and photos — a website, an app, whatever. Treat this the same way you treat graffiti: track repeat offenders and ask the public for help.
Ask the Sheriff’s Department what they actually need. Every time this topic comes up, we hear broader crime statistics. But those numbers don’t address what residents are experiencing on the paseos and trails. Every week, more kids get these machines. This is a safety and quality-of-life issue that deserves far more urgency than it’s receiving.
The City continues to publish columns in the Signal, but that assumes the families who need this message are reading it. If parents are unaware that many of these bikes are illegal on public roads and trails, then clearly our outreach isn’t reaching the right audience.
Sheriff’s Department: I get it — you’re at the mercy of the city, county, and state. But the city has found money when it mattered. They paid for two deputies with offices in City Hall before. You guys have your own e-motorcycles now. What do you need from the city to get those into regular use? I don’t think there is a magic bullet to solve this problem.
Pilar Schiavo & Suzette Martinez Valladares: You work in a town that overregulates everything. People can’t buy a plastic gun that shoots salt at bugs in California, but a 12-year-old can walk into a store and buy a high-powered electric motorcycle capable of highway speeds? This should be an easy bipartisan issue to fix. I agree with Captain Barclay: education is important, but if our laws don’t carry consequences for the people who make this a thing, or no one is enforcing them consistently, people tend to blow them off.
Every e-bike and e-motorcycle should have a VIN registered to the owner. Buyers should be required to carry liability insurance. And parents who buy these illegal machines for minors should face stiffer penalties — real fines, or contributing to the delinquency of a minor. If a kid gets cited on one of these things, they shouldn’t be able to get their driver’s license until they turn 18.
This has to stop
If you’re a regular reader of this Substack, do one thing right now: open your email and send a message to your City Council members, Hart Board, and your state representatives.
Be respectful. Don’t get nasty. Just tell them, straight up, you would like this to be a higher priority.
Because if we keep treating it as a minor annoyance, we’ll end up adding more stumps to the Youth Grove.
Santa Clarita deserves better.
Our families deserve better.
And the Ortiz family — God rest their souls — deserves justice.
AccountableSCV will continue to report on issues that warrant public scrutiny. If you value this kind of unfiltered, independent coverage, consider subscribing to support the work.