Years After Fatal Crash, a Mother Awaits Change on Highway 9
Sidewalk construction is expected to start this fall on Highway 9 between San Lorenzo Valley High School and Graham Hill Road. (Photo Jesse Kathan — Santa Cruz Local)
By Jesse Kathan, Santa Cruz Local
This story was originally published by Santa Cruz Local. Sign up for their weekly newsletters.
FELTON >> Kelley Howard sat on the couch in her Scotts Valley home, hands twisted in her lap.
A cat brushed past her legs as four others napped on various perches. One cat was pictured in a framed photo on the mantle, a black ball of fluff held tight in the arms of a grinning blond boy. As Kelley Howard described her son Josh, she slipped between past and present tense.
“Cats were huge in his life, just because he grew up with them,” she said. “But he loves all kinds of animals.”
Josh Howard had autism, and mostly kept to himself. “But if he was talking about trains, or video games, or a movie he wanted to see” — Spiderman was a favorite — “he would talk your ear off,” she said. He often walked his baby sister, Lily, through Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in a stroller, explaining the mechanical details of different trains.
In 2019 at age 22, he still wanted to live at home with his two sisters and mom, and that was just fine with her. He liked getting around on his own, though he didn’t drive. He took the bus from his Felton home to classes at Cabrillo College, and he regularly walked a mile and a half up Highway 9 to one of his jobs at Castelli’s Deli.
On a late afternoon in February 2019, after a shift at the deli, he started the walk back along the narrow shoulder of the highway towards Graham Hill Road.
Half a mile down the road, a driver drifted out of his lane, slammed into Josh Howard, and killed him.
Kelley Howard later learned that traffic engineers and local transportation advocates had been sounding the alarm about that very stretch of highway for decades, and that state authorities had failed to act. A 42-year-old man was killed in a crash near there in 2017, and a third person was injured in 2024.
Jesse Kathan
Jesse Kathan is a staff reporter for Santa Cruz Local through the California Local News Fellowship. They hold a master’s degree in science communications from UC Santa Cruz.
