A motorist and a pedestrian collided early Thursday near W. Florida Avenue and S. Lipan Street in Denver, leaving at least one person with serious injuries and forcing authorities to shut down eastbound Florida Avenue for an unknown stretch of time. The crash prompted a routine traffic update from local police, who said one person was rushed to a nearby hospital.
What Denver Police Have Confirmed So Far
According to the Denver Police Department
, officers are investigating a crash at W. Florida Avenue and S. Lipan Street that resulted in serious injuries involving a motorist and a pedestrian. The department said one person was transported to a local hospital following the collision, and that eastbound Florida Avenue was closed as a result, warning drivers in the area to expect delays.
The department's routine traffic update described serious injuries and an eastbound road closure.
A Conflicting Account of Where the Crash Happened
A separate report muddies the picture of exactly where the collision took place. A Yahoo News account describes a crash with similarly serious injuries and a hospital transport, but places the incident in the area of North Quebec Street and eastbound Interstate 70 at around 1:27 a.m. — a location distinct from the W. Florida Avenue and S. Lipan Street intersection cited by police. The same report adds that the driver remained on the scene after the injured person was taken away, a detail not addressed in the police department's own statement.
Hoodline could not independently reconcile the two locations with the information currently available. No additional details have been released about who was injured, their age or condition, what caused the crash, or whether any citations or arrests resulted from the investigation.
Lipan Street's History With Pedestrian Crashes
This is not the first time the Lipan Street corridor has seen a pedestrian seriously hurt in traffic. Back in September 2022, a pedestrian was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver in the 600 block of Lipan Street before noon, with police searching for the driver afterward, according to The Denver Post. That case remains a stark reminder that this stretch of southwest Denver has a track record of dangerous encounters between drivers and people on foot.
More recently, the city recorded a pedestrian death near Denver International Airport in August, when 28-year-old Circe Ota was struck and killed by a car on a Saturday night, Denver Post reporting states. Investigators in that case believed Ota was crossing outside a crosswalk when she was hit, and the medical examiner ruled her death an accident caused by blunt impact injuries. Denver tracks this kind of data through its Vision Zero crash dashboard, which has logged fatal and serious-injury crashes citywide since 2013.
No further updates have been released on the condition of the person hospitalized in Thursday's crash at W. Florida Avenue and S. Lipan Street, and it remains unclear how long the eastbound closure lasted or when the road fully reopened to traffic.
