PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Nearly 4 years after Fallon Smart was killed by a speeding driver while she crossed SE Hawthorne at 42nd, the City of Portland will settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family.
The Estate of Fallon Smart will be offered $395,000 to settle the lawsuit againt the City of Portland and against the Portland Bureau of Transportation for negiligence. The money will be paid from the city’s insurance and claim funds and will pose no impact on the city’s revenue, officials said.
Read the settlement proposal at the bottom of this article
The settlement was proposed after an investigation into the lawsuit by Risk Management Services determined the City of Portland and PBOT may be found liable.
The money will be paid once the Estate of Fallon Smart accepts and signs a release form.
Previous KOIN coverage: The Fallon Smart case
The crash and its aftermath
Fallon Smart was 15 and about to enter her sophomore year at Franklin High School when she was hit and killed by Abdulahraman Sameer Noorah, who was 20 at the time. Initially he fled the scene but came back and was arrested.
Investigators said Noorah was speeding between 55 and 60 mph and was allegedly passing vehicles in the center lane along Hawthorne between 46th and 43rd at the time of the crash on August 20, 2016.
About a month later, her mother, Fawn Lengvenis, begged the Portland City Council to make the streets safer.
On that September 2016 day, Fawn testified that the day Fallon was killed, she took her to Hawthorne Boulevard. “Before we parked, she asked, ‘Where is the crosswalk?’ I told her every intersection is a legal crosswalk, a statement that will haunt me forever.”
In March 2017, PBOT said they investigated the corridor from SE Cesar E Chavez Blvd (SE 39th Avenue) to SE 50th Avenue and determined the best course of action would be to install a new median refuge at 43rd.
Additionally, left turns on to Hawthorne from SE 43rd Avenue were disallowed, and PBOT also installed improved curb ramps.
The agency admitted the current intersection can be confusing for pedestrians.
Then in January 2020, a memorial to Fallon Smart at that spot became the latest casualty of the city’s streets.
Pots of flowers, a pinwheel, a wreath and a traffic sign highlighting the pedestrian passage were knocked over on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard at 43rd Avenue, leaving dirt strewn across the name written on the cement: Fallon Smart.
The Saudi connection
At the time of the crash, Saudi citizen Abdulahraman Noorah was in the United States on a school scholarship. After he hit and killed Fallon Smart, he returned to the scene and was arrested. In his first court appearance days later, he was ordered held on $1 million bail on a manslaughter charge. His public defender argued he should be released because he is not a flight risk.
But that was not the case.
Noorah bailed out of jail in September 2016 and was placed on house arrest. Not long after, he removed the GPS monitoring device he had been wearing since being released on bail.
KOIN 6 News learned the consulate of Saudi Arabia posted Noorah’s $100,000 bail on September 9, 2016, and he had been under Close Street Supervision ever since.
In December 2018, newly released photos from 2017 showed a black SUV that helped Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah escape house arrest and flee to Saudi Arabia after he allegedly hit and killed Fallon Smart.
He cut off his ankle monitoring bracelet and vanished in June 2017.
United States Marshals confirmed Noorah is in Saudi Arabia but it’s not clear how he got there.
He added US officials with Homeland Security requested additional information about Noorah’s inbound flight arrival in Saudi Arabia, “and those requests have gone unanswered. We will continue to work with HSI and our Office of International Affairs in attempts to get Noorah back to the US for trial.”
The US Marshals, he told KOIN 6 News, “are still trying to determine exactly how he made it back to the kingdom and who assisted him with fleeing the US.”
At this time, the exact whereabouts of Abdulahraman Noorah are not publicly known.