CHICAGO — Police have charged a Park Ridge man in the death of a 26-year-old cyclist who was killed while riding in Old Town Wednesday.
Ryne San Hamel, 28, was driving under the influence when his Mercedes hit Bobby Cann, police said Friday afternoon.
According to his LinkedIn profile, San Hamel is a partner in a business called AllYouCanDrink.com, which is billed as the "largest online directory for nightlife and entertainment anywhere on the planet."
On Tuesday evening, Cann was riding south on North Clybourn Avenue when he was struck by San Hamel's car, which was also traveling south, police said. Cann was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
San Hamel, of the 1200 block of South Western Avenue in Park Ridge, was charged with two felonies: aggravated DUI resulting in death and reckless homicide. Police also charged San Hamel with three misdemeanors, including failure to stay in a lane.
Cann, a Lakeview resident from New Hampshire, was an avid cyclist, who rode his bike to his job at Groupon. He was involved in Critical Mass, the bicycle advocacy group, which is riding in his memory Friday night.
Cann, who was wearing a helmet when he was struck, was popular, his friends said.
"We hardly believed what happened. He was like a brother to me," said his roommate Drew Ellis. "He was a lot of people's best friend just because that's the kind of person he was. You wanted him to be your best friend."
By Friday evening, Facebook and Twitter pages that appear to belong to San Hamel had been disabled. But a MySpace profile that was last updated in 2010 shows a man chugging two beers at once; one photo shows three men with a caption that reads "Crobar. 5am. Why would you not party."
His LinkedIn page indicates he went to Loyola Academy and played baseball at Robert Morris College, attending as recently as 2005. His online resume shows he spent much of his professional career in the nightlife industry, from founding promotion companies to managing the VIP area of swanky night club Vertigo. A message left at Vertigo was not immediately returned.
His MySpace biography says he also attended college in Arizona and worked as a club manager.
The biography closes: "My goal in life is to be happy and have fun because your life is in God's hands and you might be in heaven tomorrow."
- Kelly Bauer contributed reporting
