A 42-year-old woman from Alton was struck and killed by a driver who fled the scene on Belleville's West Main Street Wednesday morning, and police are still searching for the vehicle involved. Officers responded to the 9800 block of West Main Street at about 10:30 a.m. after reports that a pedestrian had been hit, and she was pronounced dead at the scene roughly an hour later.
The woman has been identified by the Belleville News-Democrat as Tameka L. Glastie, who was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:35 a.m. The Belleville Police Department, in a Facebook post announcing the investigation, said it would not release further identifying information regarding the pedestrian at that time.
Investigators say the driver left the area after the crash, and the vehicle is described only as dark in color, according to the same BND report. Detectives are checking cameras in the area in hopes of tracking down the vehicle, since no more specific description — make, model or plate — has been released.
Multiple Agencies Join the Investigation
Belleville police detectives and crime scene investigators are working the case alongside the Illinois State Police Traffic Crash Reconstruction Unit, the paper's report notes. The Belleville Police Department says the investigation remains ongoing, and anyone with information is asked to call (618) 234-1212.
This is not the city's first fatal hit-and-run involving a pedestrian in recent memory. In August 2025, a 33-year-old woman was struck and killed on Greenmount Road near Route 15 in a case where the vehicle also fled the scene, according to First Alert 4.
A Corridor Already Flagged for a Safety Overhaul
Wednesday's crash happened along a stretch of West Main Street that the city has already targeted for a $4.1 million redesign. A corridor study found 11 pedestrian crashes on that stretch between 2016 and 2022, three of them causing incapacitating injuries, per a separate First Alert 4 report on the planning process.
The plan calls for reducing West Main Street from five lanes to three — one lane in each direction plus a center turn lane — between 28th and 49th Street, with added pedestrian and bicycle safety features. The project is expected to be complete by the end of 2027, with state and federal grants covering about 75% of the cost, the outlet reports.
City officials have pointed to a comparable project on Natural Bridge Road, where MoDOT spent $3.4 million in 2020 adding roundabouts and reducing lanes over more than two miles. Crash data from Trailnet cited in that report showed crashes there dropped 79% afterward, with pedestrian strikes down 41% and no pedestrian deaths recorded on that stretch since the work finished.
