San Francisco police are looking for a driver who struck and killed a woman in a Visitacion Valley crosswalk — then reportedly did a U-turn and drove back past the scene of the collision.
Bay City News reports the fatal collision occurred at 11:16 a.m. at Bayshore Boulevard and Visitacion Avenue. The pedestrian, an as-yet-to-be-identifed woman in her 60s, had been walking east on Visitacion Avenue and crossing Bayshore Boulevard in a crosswalk with a green light, San Francisco police Officer Albie Esparza said.
She was struck when a white Dodge Durango with a black ski rack on the roof made a left turn onto northbound Bayshore. Here's what happened next, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:
The driver continued north for one block to Leland Avenue, police said, before doing a U-turn, driving back slowly to observe the result of the collision, and speeding away south. Paramedics who responded to the scene pronounced the woman dead, and the driver remained at large.
The suspect is described as a male with short curly hair and light brown skin.
The Chronicle adds that speeding is common in the vicinity of today's incident:
Bayshore Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare, often sees reckless driving and speeding, in part because it feeds into Highway 101 to the north, said Gary Binauhan and Philippe Gonzalez, who work at a nearby auto repair shop. They said police used to post up along the road to catch speeders, but haven't recently.
"Sometimes when we park our cars on the street, we're afraid to open our doors because they're just speeding down," Binauhan said.
"They exit from the freeway and think they're still on it," Gonzalez said. He added that even though he was outside at the time of Thursday's crash, "I didn't hear any screeching brakes or anything. It was quiet. The guy, I don't think he even stepped on the brakes."
Today's fatality was San Francisco's sixth pedestrian death of 2014.