A 31-year-old man died Thursday night after being struck by a car while walking on Interstate 10 East near Porfirio Diaz Street, a collision that shut down the freeway near Downtown El Paso for more than eight hours. The man was walking on the freeway around 10:30 p.m. when a 2026 white Mazda ZX90 driven by a 47-year-old woman struck him; police say she was unable to avoid hitting him.
According to the El Paso Times, the man died from injuries suffered in the crash. Police have not said why he was walking on the freeway, and the paper reports investigators have not released his name. The El Paso Police Department's Special Traffic Investigations Unit is handling the case, and the department has not released further information about the crash beyond identifying the pedestrian's presence on the roadway as a contributing factor.
The crash marks the city's 35th traffic-related death of 2026, a toll roughly in line with the 37 recorded at the same point in 2025, per the same report. It's the latest in a string of pedestrian tragedies this month: on August 2, a 27-year-old man named Basheer Farajallah Younis died six days after being struck by a motorcycle while crossing outside a crosswalk in Northeast El Paso, according to KVIA.
A Dangerous Stretch of Freeway
Thursday's fatality happened along a corridor with a grim history. The same stretch of I-10 East near the Porfirio Diaz overpass was the site of a fatal pedestrian crash on December 16, 2023, when 38-year-old Perla Vasquez was killed, and two relatives were hurt after a driver struck them while they were assisting a stranded vehicle on the median, as Hoodline reported on that case. Police later arrested suspect Richard Nunez in August 2024 in connection with that collision.
Just five days before Thursday's fatality, a 26-year-old motorist was critically injured in a hit-and-run on I-10 East near Airway Boulevard while changing a flat tire on the shoulder, according to the El Paso Police Department. Investigators said the fleeing suspect was driving a silver or gray Chevrolet pickup truck. Together, the two incidents point to a pattern of severe roadside and freeway pedestrian collisions along I-10 within the same week.
What the Law Says About Walking on Freeways
Under Texas Transportation Code Section 545.065, state and local authorities have the power to bar pedestrians, bicycles, and other non-motorized traffic from limited-access highways by posting official traffic-control devices, according to FindLaw. A related statute, Section 552.006, prohibits pedestrians from walking along a roadway when an adjacent sidewalk is available, and requires anyone walking on a highway without a sidewalk to stay on the far left shoulder facing oncoming traffic.
Those statutes form the backdrop for police reports that routinely cite a pedestrian's presence on freeway main lanes as a contributing factor in fatal crashes, as was the case Thursday. Texas Department of Transportation data shows 772 pedestrians were killed and 1,455 seriously injured statewide in 2024 across 6,095 pedestrian-involved crashes. TxDOT has noted that although pedestrians are involved in only 1% of total crashes in Texas, they account for 19% of all traffic fatalities.
City and State Grapple With a Persistent Problem
El Paso's own numbers underline the stakes. Between 2016 and 2020, 124 pedestrians were killed in traffic incidents in the city, ranking it 18th worst nationwide among metro areas for pedestrian fatalities, according to the City of El Paso. That record helped push the city to adopt its Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries through engineering and enforcement.
Separately, data released by the El Paso Police Department in July found that driving while intoxicated accounts for 35% of all traffic fatalities in the city, even though alcohol-related crashes make up less than 1% of total collisions. City Council urged a comprehensive anti-DWI strategy after that data came out. On the infrastructure side, TxDOT's proposed Downtown 10 project would reconstruct I-10 through central El Paso, specifically targeting the corridor around Porfirio Diaz Street to improve incident management and update outdated design standards. The agency has also deployed an automated pedestrian detection and alert system along the Loop 375 Border Highway, designed to trigger real-time warnings for drivers when pedestrians enter restricted corridors.
Thursday's crash adds to a run of freeway disruptions across the city this month. A wrong-way crash shut an I-10 to Loop 375 ramp just a day earlier, and a fatal multi-vehicle wreck on eastbound I-10 in early August led to a DWI charge against another driver, as per Hoodline. The Special Traffic Investigations Unit's inquiry into Thursday's fatality remains active, and police have not said whether any additional details will be released.
