A grim series of pedestrian fatalities has cast a somber tone over the holiday season, with two incidents leaving individuals dead after being struck by vehicles in separate cities. In St. Louis, a pedestrian lost their life late Wednesday night when a car hit them at the intersection of Gravois and Iowa avenues in the Benton Park West neighborhood, First Alert 4 reports. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, confirming the death, has launched an investigation into the crash and Accident Reconstruction investigators have been dispatched to the scene, as detailed by Fox 2 Now.
In a separate but no less tragic event in Philadelphia, tragedy struck on Thanksgiving Day, when a 41-year-old woman was killed in a hit-and-run while crossing the street on her lunch break, an incident reported by CBS News Philadelphia; the driver after striking the pedestrian continued eastbound hit another car and despite attempting to escape on foot was eventually taken into police custody, Philadelphia's Chief Inspector Scott Small highlighted the sorrow of the occasion, noting "the fact that this is a fatal hit-and-run, the fact that it happened on Thanksgiving Day just makes it that much more of a tragedy," the event occurring near the location of another recent fatality where Meaza Brown was also victim to a hit-and-run just days prior, a situation causing the community and law enforcement to reckon once more with the peril pedestrians face on a daily basis.
While the specifics surrounding the St. Louis accident remain scarce, authorities are calling upon potential witnesses to come forward and any businesses in the vicinity with surveillance footage that might shed light on the collision. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Police Department is bolstering their investigation by speaking to witnesses and reviewing camera footage from nearby businesses that likely captured the gruesome sequence of the Thanksgiving hit-and-run; the loss is compounded by the stark resemblance to another fatality in the same area, where Meaza Brown was similarly struck by a driver who ran a red light according to a CBS News Philadelphia report.
