Bryan Suguitan was a restaurant worker who helped his brother care for his family.
“I’ll remember him as a helper, even when he was tired,” his older brother Mark Suguitan, 30, said Sunday in tears. “We loved him. We loved him so much. We really miss him.”
Police said Suguitan was riding a moped south on Kalihi Street near the Hele gas station, 1950 Kalihi St., when he struck a parked vehicle at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday. He was taken in critical condition to The Queen’s Medical Center and died at 10:07 p.m.
Police said excessive speed may have been a factor.
Mark Francisco, who lives across the street from the gas station, said his housemate saw Suguitan cross the yellow line to overtake a vehicle and swerve back into his lane to avoid an oncoming car before hitting the parked SUV.
Francisco said he was in the carport eating when Suguitan crashed, and he ran to help and called 911. He said people at the scene were concerned about moving the unconscious rider and exacerbating his injuries.
On Sunday afternoon friends of Suguitan gathered at the crash scene and placed a memorial of flowers on the side of the road. A dispute broke out between Suguitan’s friends and people connected to the owner of the parked SUV, Suguitan’s friends said.
Police broke up the argument.
Suguitan, 23, crashed just a couple of blocks from his home.
Mark Suguitan said his brother had borrowed a friend’s moped to go to a bank to withdraw money before the crash. He
said his brother was not wearing a helmet, but had years of experience riding mopeds.
Suguitan said he had just returned home when his younger brother’s friends said there was an accident. He went two blocks to the scene and saw his brother on the ground.
When he tried to check his pulse, someone pulled him away, hugging him and telling him not to move his brother.
After the crash, Suguitan said, he couldn’t sleep and struggled to accept what happened. He said his brother often played with his two children, ages 6 and 1, and would drive them or his sister-in-law to their engagements. He said his 6-year-old son cried when he learned what happened to his uncle.
Suguitan said his family came to Hawaii from the Philippines in 2007, and his brother attended Farrington High School and worked in the kitchen at Nico’s Pier 38 and at a Ruby Tuesday.
“He’s a good guy,” Suguitan said.