Christy Gonzalez texted her son on a Friday night, June 16, to ask if he’d need a ride to work the next morning.
“Yes, probably,” Michael Campos-Kegley replied. He was supposed to help boil out the fryer at the Keizer Dairy Queen on Northeast Lockhaven Avenue, where Gonzalez was his manager.
When she didn’t hear from him again or see him outside his apartment on her drive the next morning, she figured he’d decided to commute by skateboard. Moments later, she had to detour because Northeast Chemawa Road was barricaded near Northeast Portland Road. There was a car and debris on the side of the road.
Gonzalez was preparing to open the restaurant when a Salem police officer knocked on the window.
It was then that she learned her son had died in the crash which she had driven by minutes earlier. A driver had struck him as he was skateboarding to work and fled, the officer said. He was then hit by another driver who stopped.
The Salem Police Department nearly two weeks later has provided little information about the June 17 collision that killed Campos-Kegley, a 21-year-old Salem resident, including whether anyone has been arrested or cited.
In a release later that day, the police agency only said witnesses had reported finding him deceased just before 5 a.m. on Chemawa Road.
Department spokeswoman Angela Hedrick two days later declined to say whether Campos-Kegley had been hit by a car. She later clarified on June 20 that “the incident is a hit and run investigation” but provided no additional information.
Salem police on June 26 asked for the public’s help in finding a 2018 Chevrolet Silverado of unknown color that is missing the covering to its passenger-side mirror and has some damage to the passenger-side headlight assembly. That news release nine days after Campos-Kegley’s death was the first public announcement that he had been hit by a car.
Meantime, Gonzalez has struggled to make sense of what happened to her son that morning.
“How could somebody hit someone and then just drive off, not worry whether or not they were okay?” she said.
Gonzalez told Salem Reporter she has since called the Salem police multiple times and left voicemails in hopes of getting more information. She wonders how investigators reached their conclusions about what caused her son’s death, such as the number of drivers that struck him. But she’s never gotten a call back.
Salem police Sgt. Jonathan Hardy declined to comment on the lack of response. “All of the investigative information released in the two previous media releases on this case is all we are able to comment on at this time as this is an active and ongoing investigation,” he said in an email Wednesday.
Gonzalez also said the department told her she could get reports of the collision from the city, which then denied her public records request. Courtney Knox-Busch, Salem’s strategic initiatives manager, declined to comment.
“It’s like we’re fighting a battle that we shouldn’t have to fight,” Gonzalez said.
“A good kid”
Michael S. Campos-Kegley was born and raised in Salem.
One of eight siblings, his mother said he was a young daredevil along with his older brother, Rudy. He loved to climb and had an affinity for skateboards ever since getting his first one when he was around 2 years old.
He spent much of high school living with his father and moved in with his brother when he turned 18.
After graduating from McKay High School in 2020, he worked as a cook at Nagoya Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi in east Salem.
Campos-Kegley also took after his brother’s love for drawing.
“He was really good. He just had an image of something that he liked and he’d just hand draw it,” Gonzalez said. She still keeps two of his drawings, a rose and a fish, at her work.
He considered one day becoming an artist for a tattoo parlor where he could draw sketches to be turned into ink, she said.
Most important to Campos-Kegley was his family, and he was protective, according to his mother.
He wasn’t mean to anybody, Gonzalez said, even if they might have deserved it.
She also said her son never wanted to let anyone down.
“He always wanted to be better. He wanted to do better. He wanted to make people proud. He’s always been a good kid,” Gonzalez said. “(He) wasn’t one that would go out for the attention, but he did like making people happy.”
Campos-Kegley started working with his mother at Dairy Queen a couple of months before his death. She said he was planning to move back in with her in July.
“He was excited about that and becoming a little more independent and standing on his own,” she said. “With mom, but still.”
Search for answers
In the days following her son’s death, Gonzalez said she posted on Facebook asking anyone with information to help.
Her daughters called businesses near where the collision occurred to check if they have cameras that captured it.
She said another Salem police officer visited her work on Tuesday to tell her they were still investigating her son’s death. “But yet, we’ve tried calling and left multiple voice messages, and we get nothing in return,” she said.
Gonzalez said she needs city reports about the crash to provide insurance information to a funeral home, but Salem officials are keeping the documents secret.
A GoFundMe page dedicated to paying for Campos-Kegley’s funeral arrangements had raised $4,127 of a $6,000 goal as of Friday.
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s real,” Gonzalez said. She recalled walking up to the restaurant earlier this week and expecting to see her son there, cleaning and closing up shop. “I don’t think it’s really going to hit until his service that he’s actually gone.”
“He was just a very caring and loving soul,” his mother said. “He was taken way too early.”
Investigators have asked anyone who may have seen the collision or otherwise has information about the case to call the Salem Police Traffic Team at 503-588-6293.
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
