He Allegedly Killed an LAPD Sergeant at 112 MPH. Then He Started a GoFundMe — for Himself.

At roughly 2:04 a.m. on June 23, 2025, on the southbound 405 Freeway near the Getty Center, LAPD Sergeant Shiou Lih Deng did exactly what a 26-year veteran does: he stopped his marked patrol car, lights flashing, to protect a stranded motorist whose pickup had been disabled minutes earlier in a hit-and-run. According to Los Angeles County prosecutors, a Nissan sedan came up behind them traveling 112.5 mph— nearly twice the 65-mph limit — and plowed into the patrol car, the disabled truck, and both men standing in the lane.

Sgt. Deng, 53, and the man he had stopped to help, 34-year-old Jesús Arturo Garcia, were both killed. On June 29, 2026, the District Attorney's office charged the driver, Mario Joseph Bickham, 36, of Hawthorne, with two felony counts of second-degree murder. Prosecutors say he had been cited for excessive speed for years — including a 105-mph stop a month before the crash, for which he never showed up in court.

And then there is the detail that turned a tragedy into something that made people stop scrolling: after the crash that killed two men, an online fundraiser titled “Support Mario's Road to Recovery” went up to help cover Bickham's own injuriesfrom the same collision. This page lays out the charge, the victims, and the audacity of the ask — with the reminder that Bickham is presumed innocent until a jury says otherwise.

• 112.5 mph — the speed prosecutors say Bickham was driving five seconds before impact, in a 65-mph zone · Source: L.A. County DA
• 2 killed — LAPD Sgt. Shiou Deng, 53, and stranded motorist Jesús Garcia, 34, both died at the scene on the 405 · Source: L.A. County DA; NBC LA
• 2 murder counts — Bickham, 36, of Hawthorne, charged with two felony counts of second-degree murder on June 29, 2026 · Source: L.A. County DA
• 105 mph, no-show — prosecutors say he was cited for 105 mph a month before the fatal crash and failed to appear in court · Source: ABC7; DA
• 26½ years — Deng's LAPD tenure, 17 of them in the department's Mental Evaluation Unit; he was assigned to West L.A. Division · Source: NBC LA; LAPD
• 15-to-life × 2 — the maximum Bickham faces if convicted as charged — up to 15 years to life per victim · Source: L.A. County DA

According to the District Attorney's charging announcement, the chain of events began at about 1:54 a.m. when Garcia's pickup was struck by an unknown driver on the southbound 405 near the Getty Center, leaving it disabled and blocking the HOV lane and an adjacent lane. Garcia, who prosecutors and family describe as a hard-working young man heading home after his shift, was stranded on one of the busiest freeways in the country in the dead of night.

Sgt. Deng arrived in a marked LAPD patrol car, emergency lights activated, and positioned his vehicle to shield the disabled truck and warn oncoming traffic — standard protective procedure. Roughly ten minutes after the first collision, at about 2:04 a.m., prosecutors say Bickham's Nissan came up the lane at 112.5 mph and slammed into the patrol car, the truck, and both men standing beside them. Neither Deng nor Garcia survived.

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Sgt. Shiou Lih Denghad served the LAPD for more than 26 years — 17 of them in the department's Mental Evaluation Unit, the team that responds to people in psychiatric crisis. Promoted to sergeant in 2023, he was assigned to the West Los Angeles Division. He was killed doing the most basic thing a patrol officer does: protecting a stranger who was stuck in a dangerous spot. The department held a full funeral service for him; colleagues described a man who, in the words of one tribute, “died a hero.”

Jesús Arturo Garcia, 34, was the stranded motorist — a man whose only mistake was being hit first, by a different driver who fled, and then being left exposed in a live freeway lane. His family remembered him in tributes as a loving son, brother, uncle, and friend. He was not a statistic in a traffic report; he was a young man heading home from work, and he died standing next to the officer who came to help him.

Here is the part that landed hardest. In the aftermath of a crash that killed two men, an online fundraiser appeared under the title “Support Mario's Road to Recovery.”The page describes Bickham as seriously injured in “a tragic accident” that caused multiple fractures requiring surgery and totaled his car, and it solicits donations to help with his recovery. It does not mention that two other people did not get a road to recovery at all.

The framing — “a tragic accident” — is doing an enormous amount of work. Prosecutors do not describe what happened as an accident. They describe a driver with, in the District Attorney's words, “an absolutely callous disregard for life,” going 112.5 mph past a freeway full of warning lights. A fundraiser that recasts the man at the wheel as the victim of his own conduct, while the two people he is charged with killing get no such page, is exactly the kind of moral inversion that makes a community furious.

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“The aggressiveness of this driving has led to a situation of an absolutely callous disregard for life.”

Nathan Hochman, Los Angeles County District Attorney

What makes the murder charge stick — rather than a lesser vehicular-manslaughter count — is a pattern. Prosecutors say Bickham had been cited for excessive speed repeatedly over roughly 15 years. Most damning: about a month before the fatal crash, the California Highway Patrol cited him for driving more than 105 mph, and, according to the DA, he did not appear in court. A driver who keeps getting caught at triple-digit speeds and keeps facing no consequence is the textbook foundation for an implied-malice murder theory: he knew the danger and did it anyway.

The broader backdrop is grim and national. Speeding has been a factor in roughly 29 percentof all U.S. traffic deaths — about 12,000 lives a year — and California consistently ranks speed and aggressive driving among its leading killers. None of that excuses the case in front of the court; it is the context in which a driver who treated a 65-mph freeway like a 112-mph racetrack ended two lives that were already doing everything right.

A 26-year LAPD sergeant stopped to protect a stranger on a dark freeway, and a driver allegedly going 112.5 mph killed them both. Mario Bickham now faces two counts of second-degree murder and up to 15 years to life per victim; he is presumed innocent, and the case will be decided in court, not on a fundraiser page. But the facts the District Attorney has laid out — the triple-digit speed, the years of citations, the 105-mph no-show a month earlier — describe conduct that the law treats as more than an accident. And the decision to ask the public to fund the alleged killer's recovery, while Shiou Deng and Jesús Garcia get funerals, is the kind of thing readers will remember long after the speed reading is forgotten. We will update this page as the case moves through arraignment and trial.

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