High-speed hit-and-run ended this young woman’s life. Will KC make streets safer?

Kansas City and bright young Zahara Kathawalla received each other with open arms when she arrived from Minnesota in 2019. But the spirited 23-year-old was forever torn from that mutual embrace on a cruel and balmy night this summer.

Months later, both her loved ones and the city she came to love are trying to make something good come from her tragic killing at the hands of an alleged drunk drag racer while she walked across the intersection of Main and 43rd streets early June 21.

Her parents, Dr. Salim A. and Farida Kathawalla, have created a foundation to endow other youths with the means to follow their education, travel and wellness passions as Zahara did. The effort, her mother says, is born of the sad acknowledgement that Zahara is never coming back.

“That realization took a long time,” she told The Star.

To hear her devastated parents tell it, Zahara Kathawalla was like any other joyous, promising young adult, only more so. She was so active and loving that her growing group of friends were often exhausted at the end of a day spent with her. She was so adventurous that she’d been to 40 countries in her 23 years. She was so engaging that the farmers she met through her commodities work at Cargill would share their family goings-on with her. She was, her parents say, every bit the “Spiritual Gangster” her favorite T-shirt proclaimed.

The Kathawallas already knew all this about their youngest of two daughters. They were still astounded at what they heard from her friends at her celebration of life service. “In every speech, they all said she was their best friend,” Farida Kathawalla says. “That blew me away. How can one person be a best friend to so many people? That sums up her givingness.”

It also sums up their loss, which is Kansas City’s as well. Zahara was precisely the kind of up-and-coming star that is the city’s lifeblood. A little of it drained out in the wee hours of June 21 at that intersection.

The question is, what is this city going to do about it?

Pedestrians, cyclists secondary in Midtown

For one thing, pedestrian and cyclist advocates would like to see more done to make Main Street and other thoroughfares safer. The need is especially acute in pedestrian-welcoming Midtown. Another promising young woman, 21-year-old Haley Elizabeth Hackett, a student at nearby Kansas City Art Institute, was likewise struck down crossing Main at 43rd in July of 2018.

The suspect in Zahara’s killing, Shabazz L. Frencher, 22, later turned herself in. She was only recently charged with DWI resulting in death or first degree involuntary manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and driving on a suspended license.

“I think it just demonstrates the need for Kansas City to continue working to create safer streets for everyone,” says Michael Kelley, policy manager at the nonprofit BikeWalkKC, which advocates for safe streets. “We prioritize our streets for drivers often to the detriment of pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and people who have limited mobility or live with disabilities.”

“One of the really unfortunate things about Main Street, in my opinion, is it largely functions like a highway at times,” says DuRon Netsell, urban designer and owner of Street Smarts Design+Build, which works on walkability and livability projects. “They’re prioritizing commuter traffic. They want to move as many cars through as quickly as possible.”

A few simple steps could make that intersection and others much safer, Netsell says, including allowing left turns and all-day on-street parking, and even utilizing blinking red stoplights much of the time — all of which would slow cars down. Kelley also suggests “bumpouts” at crosswalks, which jut sidewalks out into the street more to increase visibility by and for pedestrians.

As it is now, Netsell says, those on foot push a button and must cross quickly and at unnecessarily elevated risk: “You’ve got to hope that people are going to look out for you and they’re not traveling too fast and they see you.”

As Netsell notes, road design can’t solve all hazards. “There’s a lot of personal responsibility that comes with drinking and driving and drag racing and such,” he says. “But there are some really easy things we could do to make Main Street much safer for all. I could give you a long list.”

Society rightly makes much of its ghastly shooting numbers. But while it involved no such “weapon,” the egregious manner of Zahara Kathawalla’s killing rivals any of the year’s many gun crimes for sheer heartbreak: The car that killed her in a hit-and-run was racing another at near-100 mph speeds at times on 35-mph Main Street, and was traveling at 67 mph at impact, according to court documents.

“It’s a tremendous loss for us. We are completely broken and shattered,” says her father Salim, a Minneapolis doctor who immigrated from India in 1989. “I bathe myself in my work, which I feel is meaningful and has purpose. And that is good for my healing and my recovery. But we still have tremendous memories and moments where we just kind of break down and cry.

“It will never be the same.”

Neither should that intersection or, indeed, the city. The Kansas City Council last May adopted the “Vision Zero” goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. The city would do well to study this tragic intersection, along with ones that are even worse.

Zahara Kathawalla’s family created a foundation in order to further her legacy.

Kansas City could further it too, by making its streets safer.