S.F. man slain at Muni stop an avid cyclist with a ‘strong sense of what's right and wrong'

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

Many people would have looked away. But Colden Kimber could not.
The 28-year-old student noticed a man ranting at a group of women and children standing at a busy train stop in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood. 'You think you are better than me,' the man taunted. 'You are scared of me.'
So Kimber, a towering former hockey goalie at 6 feet 4, stepped between them.
Then, without a word, the man plunged a 6-inch knife into Kimber's neck as he turned to glance at an arriving train, prosecutors said. With his girlfriend standing behind him, Kimber tried to restrain the man. Seconds later, as blood poured from his neck, Kimber stopped moving, according to court records. Surgeons at San Francisco General Hospital tried to save him.
'I'm sorry he didn't make it,' Lara Litchfield-Kimber, Kimber's mom, recalled one of them speaking into the phone. 'It's like a fever dream, where it's not reality.'
Police arrested Sean Collins, 29, who officers said was covered in blood, a few blocks away from the stabbing last Saturday. He was charged with murder in connection with Kimber's killing at Ocean and Lee avenues. Two children, ages 8 and 14, witnessed the stabbing, prosecutors said, adding that Muni cameras captured the attack.
Kimber, an avid cyclist who grew up in central New York, was finishing his degree in kinesiology, the study of human movement, at San Francisco State University.
He discovered his love of cycling when his mom, who was fighting breast cancer, dropped out of a triathlon in New York and he took her place.
'He had never ridden a bike on a road,' she said. 'The bikes were the things that stuck.'
After moving to San Francisco with his girlfriend in June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kimber joined the Dolce Vita Cycling team and a semiprofessional ice hockey team based in Vacaville. Some evenings he rode his bike at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park, where he held cycling records on the social fitness app Strava. An intense athlete, Kimber racked up 12,000 to 13,000 miles on his bike some years.
'People would say, 'I had a Colden sighting,' but it wasn't that rare because he was always on his bike,' Litchfield-Kimber said.
When he was off his bike, he had a knack for building and fixing them. As a part-time bike mechanic and salesperson at American Cyclery in the Haight, 'he was a 'gear guy' who could take the most complicated bike and put it together — without a manual,' Litchfield-Kimber said.
Friends and family say Kimber worked out seven days a week, ate well and never drank.
'He was letting his own body be his own living laboratory,' Litchfield-Kimber said. 'He collected data on his own training. He was very into understanding the sociology behind sports performance.'
Bradley Woehl, owner of American Cyclery, recalled Kimber as 'a driven, motivated guy' with a 'strong sense of what's right and wrong.'
A memorial ride in Kimber's honor is planned at the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park on Sept. 7.
Collins is scheduled to be arraigned in mid-August.
'This whole thing is a tragedy, there's no excuse for what happened. Only in the darkest recesses of his mind, perhaps he knows he did what he did. But it also appears he blocked out the incident. This is not a 'whodunit,'' said Bill Fazio, Collins' attorney. 'I'll be looking into having him examined to see if psychiatrists can help me understand what happened. This case depresses me, because it shouldn't have happened.'
A GoFundMe to support Kimber's family had raised more than $76,000 toward its $90,000 goal as of Saturday night.