The Unyielding Wall

In Las Vegas, where luck can carry a man farther than good sense, a rider on an electric contraption met a piece of architecture that does not gamble. The encounter occurred Saturday evening at Lourdes Avenue and Paseo Del Prado, a place where the road politely ends and expects a traveler to notice.

The rider, a 36-year-old man, approached this T-intersection with confidence, perhaps too much of it, and declined the small civic ritual of slowing down. Evidence and watchful cameras agree he pressed on, veered right, and made the acquaintance of a curb, a sidewalk, and finally a cinderblock wall, which proved the most steadfast of the three.

Man and machine were thrown together into the wall and then laid out upon the pavement, their journey concluded in a manner both sudden and instructive. Although already settled, paramedics took him to UMC, where a great effort to bring him back to life played out to naught.

Officials say no fatality number will be assigned just yet, as the case must travel through certain formalities. The wall, for its part, has required no such review and remains undefeated.