A Riverside man was in the midst of in vitro fertilization treatment with his wife when a driver involved in a police chase struck and killed him outside of the hospital where he worked on Monday, July 27.
Peter Mullis, a radiologic technologist, was taking his daily walk during his lunch break when the SUV struck him outside of Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center, his sister-in-law Tatyana Dixon-Knapp said.
Police stopped the car for unspecified vehicle code violations, but the SUV drove off soon after officers got out to talk with him, said Det. Steven Espinosa with Riverside police.
Officers returned to their vehicle to follow the SUV, but seconds later, it struck Peter Mullis in a marked crosswalk and continued to flee. Police got out again to initiate life-saving measures, and Mullis was hospitalized, but he later died, Espinosa said.
Gene Amos Cunningham, 62, was arrested the following day on suspicion of murder and felony hit-and-run resulting in death. Police said Cunningham has two outstanding felony warrants and was on parole for a prior assault with a deadly weapon conviction. Cunningham is currently being held without bail.
When he was killed, Peter Mullis and his wife of more than 10 years, Layla, were in the midst of trying to have a child through a second round of IVF, she said. The couple had an implantation appointment scheduled for next month for two viable embryos.
Layla Mullis hopes to move forward with the process and have a child, but she isn’t sure what will happen or how she can afford the process since her husband’s insurance covered the treatments.
But, she said, “I cannot physically stop myself from going forward … I’m just hoping that I can have a piece of him.”
A GoFundMe for Layla Mullis, which so far has raised more than $23,000, would help to cover expenses moving forward with the IVF process, as well as funeral costs and living expenses.
A childhood friend of Layla Mullis and co-worker of Peter Mullis set the couple up in 2016. Layla Mullis was cautious about the blind date, but when she met Peter Mullis, she knew she wanted him to be her husband and the father of her children. Peter Mullis met the rest of the family during a trip to Virginia Beach while Dixon-Knapp was stationed there for the U.S. Navy.
“Immediately Peter fit in just like a puzzle piece with the family,” Dixon-Knapp said. “He was just so warm and inviting and friendly, and he just was a joy to be around.”
The couple wed at a courthouse about five months after meeting and spent nearly every day of their marriage together. One day, when Peter Mullis was scheduled to have a boys’ day out with friends, he convinced Layla to show up in a hoodie and fake mustache and join them so they could spend more time together.
Initially, the couple hoped to one day have a larger wedding celebration in their backyard and made renovations in hopes of hosting it, but after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they decided not to move forward with those plans. Though each year, they celebrated their marriage through a ceremony at the Renaissance Faire in Irwindale, where they also dressed up as characters like Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell and Belle and the Beast.
“This man was my soulmate,” Layla Mullis said. “He was my heart and soul.”
After their wedding, the couple tried for about a year to get pregnant but struggled, Layla Mullis said. At the time, IVF wasn’t affordable, so they decided to spend their time caring for, loving and sometimes spoiling their nieces and nephews as if they were their own children. They decided to try again once a California state law went into effect expanding coverage for IVF and other fertility treatments.
Peter Mullis helped his wife with all of her injections and was kind and loving during the mood swings and weight gain that they caused, she said.
Even though Dixon-Knapp’s family lives in Colorado, she said Peter Mullis talked with them every day, whether through a phone call or video chat with her and her kids or playing video games like Fortnite and Roblox and talking on the computer. The night before he died, Dixon-Knapp and Mullis taunted each other about Mario Kart, joking they were each other’s biggest rivals in the game.
She loved family trips, where Mullis and the rest of the family would get together in Las Vegas or visit Dixon-Knapp’s family for sightseeing around Colorado, so they could make memories even when they lived farther away.
It hurts to know her children will grow up without their uncle, whom they affectionately called Uncle Popo, Dixon-Knapp said. When they were in California, Peter Mullis loved taking his nieces and nephews to the Huntington Library, the Fullerton Arboretum and other museums around the region.
“He just was all about family, spending that time together,” Dixon-Knapp said, “and creating those memories that you create with family.”