Auburn Gresham Man Charged After Speeding Car Kills Scooter Rider, 47, and Flees

A 45-year-old Chicago man is facing felony charges after police say he sped through Auburn Gresham, struck and killed a 47-year-old woman riding a scooter, and then fled the scene without stopping. Darryl Short was taken into custody two days ago and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday for a detention hearing.

Chicago police say the crash happened on July 24 in the 2200 block of West 79th Street, according to WGN-TV. Investigators allege Short was driving at a high rate of speed before he struck the woman and then allegedly fled the scene rather than stopping to render aid or identify himself.

Short has been charged with one felony count of reckless homicide and one felony count of leaving the scene of an accident causing injury or death, according to Chicago police. Under Illinois law, reckless homicide is defined as an unintentional killing resulting from operating a vehicle in a reckless manner, requiring prosecutors to show a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk, and it carries a two-to-five-year prison term as a Class 3 felony, per Illinois statute.

Leaving the Scene Carries Its Own Steep Penalty

The hit-and-run charge is separately serious. Illinois Vehicle Code requires drivers involved in crashes causing injury or death to stop immediately and to report to police within 30 minutes, or the offense escalates to a Class 1 felony punishable by four to 15 years in prison, according to Katz Friedman. State law requires drivers involved in serious crashes to render aid and provide identifying information at the scene.

The victim was riding an e-scooter at the time she was struck. Under the Illinois Vehicle Code, electric micromobility devices are classified as motor vehicles exempt from registration, with a minimum riding age of 16 and a maximum speed threshold of 28 miles per hour, according to a Darien City Council document outlining the rules. Riders on scooters are granted the same rights and duties as drivers on public roads, but they carry little of the protection.

A Corridor Known for Danger

Research from the Active Transportation Alliance has found that people traveling on foot or on light micromobility options like scooters in Chicago are roughly 12 times more likely to suffer injury or death in a crash than occupants inside motor vehicles, according to Power Rogers. That vulnerability is compounded on 79th Street, which the Chicago Department of Transportation has designated part of its High Injury Network — a set of major arterial roads that make up just 10% of the city's major street mileage but account for 28% of severe traffic injuries and 32% of traffic deaths citywide, per ThatCarHitMe.com.

Nearby, the intersection of Ashland Avenue and 79th Street ranked among Chicago's ten most dangerous intersections for pedestrians and cyclists between 2020 and 2024, recording 17 crashes involving vulnerable road users and two fatalities over that five-year span, according to IDOT data cited in a Reddit discussion of the figures. Citywide, hit-and-run crashes disproportionately strike pedestrians and micromobility riders, who made up 42% of such collisions, and 64% of fatal pedestrian crashes involved larger vehicles like SUVs, vans, or pickup trucks, per crash data reported by Streetsblog Chicago.

Part of a Troubling Pattern in Auburn Gresham

This is not the first fatal hit-and-run to draw scrutiny to the neighborhood this year. In May, Hoodline reported on a fatal hit-and-run in which a 36-year-old pedestrian was struck and killed near 87th Street and Ashland Avenue by a driver who fled and was never immediately identified. And in March, Chicago police arrested a 29-year-old man in connection with a 2024 hit-and-run that killed a 77-year-old pedestrian along the same 79th Street corridor in nearby Avalon Park, a case Hoodline also covered.

CDOT's most recent annual accounting recorded 130 traffic crash fatalities across the city in 2024, including 45 pedestrians and four bicyclists or scooter riders, a decline from the peak of 186 deaths recorded in 2021, per ThatCarHitMe.com. It remains unclear whether prosecutors will seek pretrial detention for Short under Illinois' pretrial fairness rules or whether additional traffic or speed-related charges could follow after Thursday's detention hearing.