Sapphire Energy Executive Killed in Crash

The corporate controller at San Diego’s Sapphire Energy was killed earlier this week when an out-of-control sport-utility vehicle swerved into a bike path while he was bicycling home from work. A close friend told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Poway, CA-resident Nick Venuto, 40, was an avid bicyclist and married father of two. Venuto was pedaling home from work on a bike path along State Route 56 Tuesday evening when he was struck by a Ford Escape driven by 27-year-old Sheena Saranita after she lost control of her vehicle. Another bicylist, Baron Herdelin-Doherty also was hit, and was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.