It was nearing bedtime for Ayden Fang, but he begged his parents to let him stay up to finish his building-brick creation. He did not normally play with the toy set on weeknights, but that evening, he had pulled out a set of seawall-themed blocks and begun work on a colorful tower.
Four-and-a-half-year-old Ayden was so proud of his project that he asked to take a photo with it, said his father, Ming Fang. He wanted to keep the finished tower, made of vibrant blues, greens and yellows and topped with a bear and two dinosaurs, so he placed it on the playroom’s mantel in his family’s Burlingame home.
Two days later, on Aug. 8 of last year, Ayden was killed when he was struck by a car while playing on the sidewalk in front of Truffle Poké Bar in downtown Burlingame.
The incident unfolded when two children were riding an e-bike down Donnelly Avenue, a two-lane road between Lorton Avenue and Primrose Road. Authorities said they had the right-of-way, but a 19-year-old woman pulling out of a parking lot did not see them as they headed perpendicular to her vehicle. The e-bike collided with the car, and the driver, who police said was startled by the collision, accelerated across the street, killing Ayden and injuring a 6-year-old girl, both of whom were with their family in front of the restaurant.
The girl, who was not related to Ayden, was expected to recover.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against the driver of the vehicle because they could not prove criminal negligence, said San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe. He said that the driver was “startled by this scooter zipping by.” The DA’s decision likely brings the criminal aspect of the case to an end.
“It’s a horribly sad case,” Wagstaffe said. “Not all things like this are crimes. Very often they are very simply civil lawsuits.”
The DA’s decision not to file criminal charges has caused the family “profound sadness” and a feeling “of injustice,” Fang said.
“We don’t really understand why this would not be considered gross negligence,” Fang said. “We disagree with that, but it’s not our decision to make.”
Multiple calls to the Burlingame Police Department from the Bay Area News Group, asking about the investigation, were not returned. The city’s Public Works Department did not respond to a request for comment about the road and public safety. The city attorney’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.
A few days after Ayden’s death, his mom noticed that two blocks Ayden built into his brick tower were stamped with a message: “Protect Our City.”
It was later that his parents learned that two other pedestrians had been fatally struck by vehicles in the year preceding Ayden’s death, which, in a city of less than 31,000 people, puts the pedestrian fatality rate at four times the most recent U.S. average. They also found that two parking spots on Donnelly Street, including one adjacent to the scene of the crash that killed Ayden, were removed shortly after Ayden’s death; the city had determined in 2024 that the removal would provide visibility benefits, according to reporting by the San Mateo Daily Journal.
“(It) just still sends chills down my spine to think about that,” Fang said. “He’s trying to tell us something.”
The family is exploring its other legal options but has not yet made a decision about its next steps, Fang said. For now, the Fang family knows that they want each party to the collision to take responsibility for their role, and they want Ayden’s legacy to address his final message, to “Protect Our City” for everyone on its streets so that he “didn’t die in vain,” Fang said.
“The parties involved here — the city, the driver, the driver’s parents, the e-biker, the e-biker’s parents — will all need to come together and make the area safe again,” Fang said. “They can’t just pretend they’ve made a mistake and move on with their lives, because Ayden no longer has a life, and we no longer have Ayden in our lives.”
Ayden’s family has installed a Little Free Library monument across the street from where he died to honor his life and love of reading.
“We just want memories of Ayden to live on forever, and we want those memories to result in something constructive for the community, for the broader world,” he said. “Let Ayden’s love persist. Let Ayden’s impact be as enduring as possible.”
Ayden was at a “magical age” where he was starting to become more self-sufficient, Fang said. He had “so much potential and so much hope,” and his four years were “brief but dazzling and profound.”
“He just (started) to show his personality, and he just started to show his interests,” Fang said. “We started to have these deeper conversations as individuals and as friends.”
For Fang, the first word that comes to mind when he thinks of his Ayden is “loving.”
“He was becoming our best friend,” Fang said. “To rip that away before the parent-child relationship (has) gone through the typical cycles of separation, it’s more than taking off your arm or leg. It’s ripping off half your brain and half your heart.”
The family has established two scholarships in Ayden’s name — one at his preschool, and one at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama to send kids to space camp, Fang said.
The Little Free Library, stocked with children’s books, bears his picture, is painted in the colors of Ayden’s tower and leads visitors to a website, forayden.com, where Ayden’s family has written stories and memories. His mom took the colors of the building bricks to a paint store and had them color-matched, Fang said.
“We wanted to stand out,” Fang said. “We wanted to represent the underlying message of what happened, and we wanted to represent Ayden.”
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Ayden’s Little Free Library dedicated to Ayden E. Fang near the site of his death in downtown Burlingame, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. Ayden, 4-years-old, died in August after being struck by a vehicle in downtown Burlingame. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
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Ayden’s Little Free Library dedicated to Ayden E. Fang near the site of his death in downtown Burlingame, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. Ayden, 4-years-old, died in August after being struck by a vehicle in downtown Burlingame. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
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Ayden’s family plans to engage with the local government to create a permanent memorial honoring Ayden, where they hope to include an element of traffic safety.
“Nothing is going to feel like justice,” Fang said. “There’s nothing that can replace Ayden.”
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