A Sacramento dad was the second person to die on Marysville Boulevard in 2025
.jpeg "Bee Lao poses for a selfie with his daughter, Sophia Lao, and baby son, Benjamin Lao. Lao was hit by a car and killed while walking on Marysville Boulevard, one of Sacramento’s most dangerous roads. The 46-year-old father was the fourth person to die on Marysville in two years.")
Bee Lao, who taught his daughters to fish on the banks of the Sacramento River, was hit by a car and killed while crossing one of Sacramento’s most dangerous roads Nov. 2. He was 46.
After Lao’s death in North Sacramento’s Hagginwood neighborhood, his family has struggled financially. His wife, Stella Xiong, started a GoFundMe to help pay for his funeral and for some expenses while she and their five young children face their first holiday season without him. As of Monday night, the family had raised all but a fifth of their $15,000 goal.
The father was fatally struck at the intersection of Marysville Boulevard and Del Paso Road. Both roads are part of the city’s designated high-injury network — the 14% of city streets where 79% of fatal and severe injury crashes occur.
The Department of Public Works considers Marysville Boulevard one of the five most dangerous roads in Sacramento. Zachery Ryan Taylor, a 20-year-old motorcyclist, died on Marysville Boulevard in April, and two men — Jordan Nicolas Rodriguez, a 38-year-old cyclist, and Alfred Ramirez, a 23-year-old driver — died in separate crashes along the four-lane road in October 2024.
Changes to infrastructure and policy can prevent the vast majority of vehicle deaths. With that in mind, the City Council made a “Vision Zero” pledge in 2017 to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2027. Data released by the Sacramento Police Department shows that, in addition to Lao, more than 350 people have died on roadways in California’s capital in the years since the pledge.
“I just don’t really know what to do,” said Sophia, Lao’s 14-year-old daughter. “I’m so used to having him around the house. It’s just hard on me to believe that he’s actually gone. And I think that’s what grieving does — you just can’t believe that something like that could ever happen to someone that you love.”
More than two dozen road deaths in 2025
In 2025, vehicle collisions have killed at least 29 people in Sacramento: Najah Islam, 30; Jonathon T. Slaugh, 62; Adrienne Keyana Johnson, 33; Cornelius Jesse, 59; Vuong Van Nguyen, 47; Zachery Ryan Taylor, 20; Natalia Regina Sanchez, 50; William Andrew Akens, 26; Ernesto Torres, 58; Zhen Cheng Kuang, 76; Thongthai Xanaxay, 55; Kaleb Josiah Green, 22; Huynh Huu Duc Nguyen, 30; Robert Michael Pineschi Jr., 39; Kimberly Lynn Pickett, 60; Parris Shauntel Windham, 41; Michael Driskell, 78; three young men from the same family — Mohammad Shaoib Durrani, 22, Hashmatullah Durrani, 24, and Omar Durrani, 25; Ricky Ray Reyes, 19; Jeremy M. Robinson, 46; James Lee Little, 64; Alicia Andrea Barnes, 65; Nedra Lee Franklin, 67; Gerald Hall, 60; Lao; Kyle Scott Silvers, 33; and Randy Allen Perez, 41. Seven of the dead were motorists, and 22 were pedestrians or cyclists.
Sacramento intends to reduce the number of lanes on the stretch of Del Paso Boulevard that merges into Marysville Boulevard, where Lao was killed. Narrowing the space for vehicles tends to slow drivers down, and reduced speeds on Marysville Boulevard would likely save lives. But that lane reduction — outlined in the Transportation Priorities Plan — is considered a low priority and does not have funding.
On Marysville, in an area north of the Y intersection, the city has fast-tracked a cheaper, “quick-build” version of a safety improvement plan that’s considered high-priority; construction bids are currently under review. The longer-term permanent project is, a spokesperson for the city department said, in preliminary engineering and environmental review. Staff are seeking $9.1 million in grants for construction.
Partially because the city relies on competitive grants to fund these infrastructure improvements, many planned road safety projects remain unfunded for years or decades. After The Sacramento Bee reported on 32 traffic deaths in 2024, the City Council approved $4.6 million to establish a quick-build team to rapidly improve infrastructure on dangerous roads without waiting for grant funding. Public Works officials originally planned to have the six-person team staffed and working by July 1. Although hiring for the team lagged, the department has forged ahead with more quick-build projects.
In the meantime, the traffic death toll has continued to rise — along with the number of grieving families. Lao left his wife and young children behind just weeks before Thanksgiving. Families like his bear the brunt of paying for dangerous roads: in the financial fallout, the funerals and the untold loss.
A loving father
Bee Lao was born July 5, 1979, to a Hmong family living in a Thai refugee camp. His mother gave birth amid the fallout of the Vietnam War, during which the Hmong people had fought as American allies. When Lao was 7, he and his family immigrated to the United States, and Lao eventually moved to Sacramento. He helped his parents care for his three younger siblings.
Lao’s wife, Stella Xiong, is more comfortable speaking Hmong and declined to be interviewed. But Xiong and Lao’s daughter Sophia said she wanted to speak about her father.
Sophia, a high school freshman, is the oldest of the couple’s five children. She said that because her mother worked nights, Lao had been the primary caretaker for her, her three younger sisters — Isabella, who just turned 11; Priscilla, 6; and Alexandra, 5 — and her 2-year-old brother, Benjamin.
“He’s always there to make sure that we’re getting taken care of,” Sophia said.
Lao had forged a career in health benefits administration and was working remotely for Sutter Health. Sophia said that he took a short break every morning to drive her to school, and that whenever Benjamin cried during the day, Lao would scoop him up and keep working with the baby on his lap.
Since Lao’s death, the family has contended not just with mourning but also with financial worries — on top of losing his income, Xiong had to take temporary unpaid leave because she was overcome by grief. They’re not sure how to navigate the holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas, Sophia said, were their favorite celebrations. Lao liked to cook, but for some reason, they had developed a Thanksgiving tradition of feasting on KFC and In-N-Out.
“He always put a smile on everyone’s face,” Sophia said — joking around with family, neighbors and friends from church. Sophia’s favorite memory of him is preserved on video: He’s kneeling on the living room floor in their old home while she, then a tiny girl, puts mascara on his eyelashes. The two of them both giggle.
Although Lao wanted his children to succeed in school and eventually go to college, he was not the kind of parent who pretended to be perfect. Lao told Sophia colorful stories about his misadventures as a kid. He described how his teacher hit him with a ruler as a punishment. He told his daughter that, as a teen, he got himself fired from low-paying jobs that he hated at Taco Bell and Little Caesars.
“My dad, he just tells me about his story when he was a teenager,” Sophia said. “I find that pretty funny.”
She took it as a lesson: It was OK to make mistakes sometimes, because that’s how people grow. Sophia watched him change as a father, becoming a more involved parent over time.
“He was always doing his best,” she said, “with just trying to be there for us. He always put me and my siblings first, before himself.”
Accomplishments and adoration
He also modeled a sense of ambition for his children. Lao was the first in his family to earn a college degree. He got a white-collar job that allowed him to work from home and care for the kids. Lao and Xiong had saved money while living in a two-bedroom apartment with two adults and five kids. Over the summer, they finally moved into a larger home in Robla. Sophia said he kept it fastidiously tidy because he was so appreciative of the extra space.
Lao was an avid fisherman, and he had already begun to teach the girls his angling secrets; Benjamin was next. Lao’s younger girls were delighted when he came home with a fresh catch and grilled it for dinner. Sophia said that she’d see her dad manning the barbecue with tongs in one hand and his toddler son in the other.
Because Sophia is already a teenager, Lao didn’t watch her as actively anymore. But he made sure she knew that he adored her. Before he left the house the day he was fatally struck by a driver, he walked into her room and gave her a hug.
“The last words he basically told me, which is the same day he passed away, were ‘I love you,’” she said. “It’s just kind of sad to not hear my dad’s voice again.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
