Hell Bound City Tattoo shop owner Esteban Dalpra was injured in a hit and run on Monday, Oct. 28. According to reports, a government employee driving a box truck through the City of Miami ran a stop sign at 45th street and North Miami Ave and struck Dalpra on his motorcycle then attempted to flee.
Four witnesses were present. A heroic woman followed the truck driver in her car and, armed with a cell phone camera, helped police quickly nab him. But the incident has left Dalpra in the Intensive Care Unit at the Ryder Trauma Center.
Update: The hit and run driver has been identified as 64 year old Angel Alberto Ochoa of Homestead.
See also: Hellbound City Tattoo Founder Esteban Dalpra Recovering From Hit-and-Run: "I Was So Close to Dying"
Here is a diagram of the incident filed by police in their Florida Traffic Crash Report and sent to Tallahassee.
The official police narrative included with the incident report on the accident shows that the driver was apprehended, arrested, and charged. We will update this post with the arrest report when it becomes available.
Esteban was hit by a 2007 GMC w4500. Here is a picture of the vehicle model. Not something you'd want to get hit by in a tank, let alone on a 1976 Honda motorcycle.
Friends have started an online fundraising site to offset Dalpra's medical expenses and cover the cost of his family's travel to Miami from Argentina so they can be with him. Visit the page online to make a donation.
When Esteban founded Hell Bound City Tattoo in 2007, it became the first tattoo shop in the Wynwood Arts District. He built almost everything in it from scratch, hand-painted its deep red exterior, and hand-lettered its signage, visible from the adjacent highway.
Located on 36th Street between NW Second and Third Avenues, it has become a neighborhood landmark, especially for the many local customers the shop services daily. The shop is rated 5 stars on Yelp, and won a Best of Miami award in 2010.
Hellbound City is open for business and its artist employees are tattooing at discount rates to raise money for the boss.
Esteban is a proud Argentinian from Buenos Aires who has no immediate family in this country. But he is a well known figure in the South Florida arts community, not only for his tattoo skills but also for his welding, metal work, prop making for photo and video productions, mechanic work, and in classic car, hot rod, pinup girl, rockabilly, and greaser circles.
Before starting his own shop, he worked for years at Tattoo Circus on South Beach.
It's holiday season. Help a brother out.
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