A family of four waiting at a neighborhood bus stop in San Francisco’s West Portal district was wiped out in seconds when an SUV jumped the curb and plowed into the shelter. Now, the elderly driver at the center of that crash is fighting to turn the case into a misdemeanor, even as prosecutors and relatives insist the deaths demand felony accountability. The clash between grief, age, and responsibility is reshaping not just one courtroom battle, but the way an entire city thinks about who should be behind the wheel.
What happened on that sidewalk has already triggered redesigns of a busy intersection and a wave of anger that has not cooled with time. As the legal case grinds forward, the story has become a test of how far San Francisco is willing to go to treat deadly driving as a serious crime, regardless of how old the person holding the keys might be.
The crash that shattered West Portal
The collision unfolded in the heart of West Portal, a compact commercial strip where families cut through to the Muni station, grab coffee, and wait under the glass bus shelter that now doubles as a memorial. Investigators say an 80-year-old woman behind the wheel of an SUV accelerated into that shelter, killing a Couple and their two young children who had been standing there together. The impact turned a routine wait for public transit into one of the city’s most searing traffic tragedies in recent memory.
Relatives later identified two of the adults as Diego Cardoso de, who were celebrating their wedding anniversary when the SUV hit. The family had chosen a low-key day in the neighborhood, a quick stop at the bus shelter before heading toward the San Francisco Zoo, when the driver’s vehicle suddenly crossed into the space that was supposed to keep them safe. For neighbors, the idea that a quiet anniversary outing could end in a pile of shattered glass and twisted metal has become a shorthand for how unforgiving city streets can be.
The driver, the charges, and a push for leniency
At the center of the case is Mary Fong Lau, who was 78 at the time of the crash and is now described in court filings as an elderly Driver who had lived in San Francisco for decades. Prosecutors have charged her with multiple counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, arguing that the way she drove into the shelter in West Portal crossed the line from tragic mistake into criminal negligence, a position they have repeated in hearings in the Bay Area and in filings that describe the scale of the loss in San Francisco…