Ventura College Water Polo athlete Sarah Galbawy, 19 died from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident in the Pine Mountain community on New Years Eve.
By Patric Hedlund
A 19-year-old Thousand Oaks woman was killed in a bicycling accident in Pine Mountain on New Year’s Eve morning. Sarah Galbawy was riding down the steep grade of Woodland Drive at about 9:55 a.m. when she lost control, went over the handlebars and ran headlong into a utility pole near the Mil Potrero Frontage Road.
Galbawy was airlifted from Pine Mountain’s Fire Station #58 to Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield. She died there. The autopsy said death was caused from multiple blunt-force trauma injuries. Firefighters and CHP officers said in interviews that the college student was wearing a helmet.
Galbawy was praised by her water polo team in a memorial last week at the Ventura College pool. She was remembered as a superb athlete who was also helping to coach Newbury Park High School water polo students. She graduated from that school in 2010.
The family was visiting in the Pine Mountain community over the holidays. She was riding with her father when the accident occurred, CHP investigators said. He ran to the homes of neighbors to make a call to 911. It is an area without cell phone service.
Mary Giles, head coach of Galbawy’s Ventura College women’s water polo team said Galbawy was “an ideal athlete.”
“She was a great kid. It is such a tragedy to lose her….She was really a joy to be around and was an excellent player who worked hard," Giles said in a Ventura County Star report about the memorial.
This is part of the January 13, 2012 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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