A pedestrian pushing a shopping cart was killed in the early hours of Sunday morning when a pickup truck struck him on West Mill Street in San Bernardino, then slammed into a palm tree near a nearby gas station. The driver got out and ran, leaving the wrecked Toyota Tacoma behind, and as of Monday afternoon was still nowhere to be found.
The collision happened around 3:30 a.m. in the 900 block of West Mill Street, according to police cited by the San Bernardino Sun. Investigators believe the pedestrian was walking along the south side of the street, possibly on the sidewalk, when the Tacoma, headed east on Mill Street, struck him. He died at the scene.
Truck Found Wrapped Around a Palm Tree
After hitting the pedestrian, the Tacoma continued on and collided with a palm tree near a Shell station, San Bernardino police Lt. Christopher Gray said, according to the same report. The driver then abandoned the truck and fled on foot, leaving investigators to piece together the crash scene without him. Authorities believe he was driving under the influence of alcohol, and described him only as a man thought to be in his 40s.
As of Monday afternoon, the driver remained at large, and no updates on an arrest have been reported. The case echoes a similar hit-and-run Lt. Gray detailed back in March, when a 2017 Toyota Tacoma allegedly struck a woman at Marshall Boulevard and D Street and sped off. In that earlier case, officers recovered the truck's front bumper and license plate at the scene, used the plate to trace the vehicle to its registered owner, and arrested a 21-year-old suspect on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and DUI.
A Pattern of Unsolved Fatal Hit-and-Runs
This is not the first time San Bernardino has seen a driver disappear after a fatal crash. In 2022, authorities searched for a driver wanted in a separate fatal hit-and-run that also happened on a Sunday, according to CBS News Los Angeles. In that case, 43-year-old James Gatson was using his wheelchair to cross East Highland Avenue outside of a crosswalk when he was struck by possibly two vehicles, neither of which stopped. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Drunk driving has also turned deadly for larger groups in the region. A suspected drunken driver struck roughly 30 bicyclists during a Halloween ride in San Bernardino County, killing two people and injuring two others, KTLA reported. Statewide, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities dipped about 4.5 percent from 1,419 in 2022 to 1,355 in 2023, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety, though that statewide figure does not speak to any specific trend in San Bernardino itself.
For now, the man who crashed his Tacoma into a palm tree after killing a pedestrian on Mill Street remains unidentified and unaccounted for. Anyone with information on the driver's whereabouts has not yet been given a dedicated tip line in the reporting on this case, and San Bernardino police have not announced further updates since Monday afternoon.
