Hit-and-run case reopened after woman dies 11 years after San Jose collision

SAN JOSE — Police are reopening a 2011 hit-and-run case after a former Los Gatos High School student died a decade after a driver hit her at an intersection near Cambrian Park and left her with debilitating injuries, authorities said.

Shea Shaw, a then-15-year-old girl from Campbell, was with her boyfriend about 1:10 a.m. Jan. 8, 2011 at the intersection of Camden and Bascom avenues when she was hit by a motorist traveling east on Camden in a gray or silver early-2000s model sedan, according to San Jose police. The driver fled the area.

The only video available of the collision was grainy surveillance footage from a nearby gas station, and the case has remained unsolved ever since.

Her father told this news organization in 2011 that his daughter and her boyfriend had just left a party and were acting playfully in a grassy area when she ran out ahead of the boyfriend and the driver hit her.

An outpouring of community support emerged in the wake of the collision, which left Shaw with serious head and internal injuries and broken bones. She was a popular student at Los Gatos High known for her exuberant personality, and was a cheerleader for the school the year before the collision.

The collision left Shaw in a coma and resulted in her becoming quadriplegic, police said. On April 19, while in hospice care, Shaw died.

San Jose police said in light of her death, “the hit and run investigation will be re-opened in an effort to generate leads.”

For record-keeping, San Jose police are investigating Shaw’s death as the 28th roadway death of 2022 — a total that grew to 29 after a North San Jose collision early Friday — and the case becomes the 16th pedestrian fatality of the year.

This year is on pace to become the deadliest on city roadways, with a trajectory well above the 25-year peak of 60 deaths reached last year and in 2015 and 2019. The 2011 collision also marks the city’s eighth fatal hit-and-run case of 2022, according to data compiled by this news organization.

Anyone with information about the Jan. 8, 2011 collision can contact SJPD traffic Detective Rachel Bowen at 408-277-4654 or by email at 4461@sanjoseca.gov, or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at svcrimestoppers.org.