Render did several on-camera interviews that day, offering details of the crime. The driver, he said, had driven on with Bachan's friend lying on the hood of the car. The car stopped suddenly and a passenger jumped out to pull the young man's body to the ground. The car then sped off again.
Media interest exploded the next morning, when Bachan's mother went to the site of the hit-and-run, clutching photographs of her daughter, a freshman from Santa Barbara.
Television crews and newspaper reporters waiting for an LAPD news conference swarmed the woman. Wild with grief, she paced back and forth. "Please, anyone who knows anything, please help us," she wailed. "Please, I beg you."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, May 08, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 77 words Type of Material: Correction
Hit-and-run reward: An article in Monday's Section A examining two hit-and-run fatalities said staffers for Los Angeles Councilman Bernard Parks had arranged for a reward in one of the cases without first receiving a request from the Los Angeles Police Department. The article cited an LAPD officer on that point, but department officials now say the officer was unaware that a commanding officer had contacted Parks' office to inquire about a reward before the offer was made.
Over the next several days, television broadcasts and news websites were saturated with images of an inconsolable Carmen Bachan at news conferences, addressing the L.A. City Council and attending memorial services for her daughter. The photographs of Adrianna she carried and held up to the cameras added to the pathos. The media seized on one that showed a rosy-cheeked young woman with dirty-blond hair and big, round eyes, smiling broadly.
The callousness of the driver and passenger, the grief of the mother, the image of a beautiful young woman -- it all added to the usual pressure on LAPD and city officials to quickly solve high-profile crimes at USC, an enclave of privilege and wealth surrounded by poverty and violence.
Typically, City Council members wait for a request from police before posting a reward in a case. But police said staffers for Councilman Bernard Parks, who represents the USC area, did not wait for a request and arranged for speedy approval of a $75,000 reward -- the highest amount allowable under city statute.
The university added $50,000, the county Board of Supervisors $10,000, and an anonymous donor $100,000, bringing the total to $235,000. It was more than someone could collect from the city for information about a serial killer believed responsible for at least 11 deaths.
News of the reward led to hundreds of tips, which quickly overwhelmed detectives. Normally, one or two detectives work a fatal hit-and-run. In this case, LAPD officials assigned all four detectives in the South Bureau Traffic Division, along with several police officers and about 12 of the bureau's best homicide detectives, who put their other cases on hold, police said.
