A driver fleeing an Annapolis police traffic stop struck a pedestrian on Oct. 28, then abandoned the vehicle and took off on foot, leaving the injured man behind as officers continue searching for the suspect. The pedestrian was taken to a hospital.
According to The BayNet, Annapolis police officers initiated a traffic stop on Oct. 28, and the driver failed to stop, instead striking an adult male pedestrian while trying to evade officers. That outlet places the collision near the intersection of Forest Drive and Chinquapin Round Road and reports the pedestrian suffered non-life-threatening injuries before being transported to a local hospital.
A separate Patch report describes a pedestrian crash on Friday, Oct. 23, at the intersection of Forest Drive and Bywater Road, near the Annapolis Marketplace shopping center, and the victim suffered life-threatening injuries. That account states the man was later transported by a Maryland State Police Aviation crew to a local trauma center. The Patch crash was reported five days before the Oct. 28 crash described by The BayNet.
Driver Fled on Foot After Abandoning Vehicle
Both accounts agree on the core sequence of events: the driver did not remain at the scene. Patch's report notes plainly that the driver of the vehicle did not remain at the scene, while The BayNet's account describes the driver abandoning the car after the collision and running off on foot. Investigators have not released additional details on the case, including the type of vehicle involved, according to the same Patch report.
The Annapolis Police Department is investigating the hit-and-run, and the investigation remains ongoing, per Patch's reporting. No arrest has been announced, and the suspect's identity has not been released.
Hit-and-Run Crashes Remain a Persistent Problem
The Annapolis case adds to a troubling national pattern. More than 900,000 police-reported crashes nationwide, representing 15 percent of all police-reported crashes, involved a driver leaving the scene in 2023, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Those hit-and-run crashes caused 242,886 injuries and 2,872 deaths that year, the foundation found, and pedestrians bore a disproportionate share of the toll: pedestrians accounted for 17,368 hit-and-run injuries, or 25.4 percent of all pedestrian injuries recorded in 2023, and 1,818 hit-and-run fatalities, or 24.9 percent of all pedestrian deaths that year.
Maryland has its own pedestrian-safety concerns. A state pedestrian-safety brief from Zero Deaths Maryland notes that Maryland drivers were involved in around 3,000 pedestrian crashes annually. The state also maintains a crash-data dashboard meant to help identify trends and examine crash characteristics across Maryland roadways, according to the Zero Deaths Maryland program.
Pedestrian crashes have cropped up elsewhere in Maryland in recent months. In Montgomery County, officers responded to a pedestrian-strike call in late September near Arctic Avenue and Bel Pre Road, where they found an adult female suffering serious injuries, according to a statement from the Montgomery County Government. Separately, the Maryland State Police investigated a fatal pedestrian crash in Anne Arundel County involving a pedestrian and a bus, in which police said they believed the pedestrian walked from the shoulder into the travel lane before being struck.
For now, the circumstances of the Annapolis crash, including the driver's identity and the discrepancies in location and injury severity between the two local reports, remain unresolved. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Annapolis Police Department as the investigation continues.
