A 20-year-old Fort Worth man has died two days after he was critically injured while riding an electric scooter near the border of Everman and Fort Worth. Marzette Harden was struck while trying to cross traffic on West Enon Avenue on Monday, Oct. 5, and he died Wednesday at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital.
Harden was struck by two vehicles in the 100 block of West Enon Avenue at about 4 p.m., according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Everman officials said he was hit while trying to cross traffic in that area. An earlier account from the same newspaper had described the crash differently, reporting that Harden was critically injured after colliding with a van — a detail that has not been reconciled with the later report of two vehicles being involved.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Harden’s death an accident and listed the cause as blunt force injuries, the Star-Telegram reported. The Fort Worth Police Department confirmed the 20-year-old’s death, and a police spokesperson said neither driver involved in the crash is expected to face criminal charges.
A Pattern Playing Out Across Texas
Harden’s death adds to a string of recent e-scooter fatalities involving drivers across the state. In Baytown, a 17-year-old died after being struck by a vehicle while riding an electric scooter on Sept. 25, with officers dispatched at about 5:30 p.m. to the intersection of Tri City Beach Road and Trinity Oaks Boulevard, according to the Baytown Sun.
Near Katy, an 11-year-old child died one day after colliding with a vehicle while riding an e-scooter, in a crash that happened in the 26600 block of Roesner Road at the intersection with Elk Ridge Lane, per Click2Houston. In Austin, an adult e-scooter rider was struck and killed by multiple vehicles while traveling northbound on MoPac Expressway, as reported by CBS Austin.
What the Data Shows — and Doesn’t
At least 40 e-scooter riders have been seriously injured or killed in Austin since 2022, according to the city’s Transportation and Public Works Vision Zero dashboard, CBS Austin reported. That same dashboard data does not reveal a clear trend from year to year, even as an attorney cited by the station said injuries and their severity are increasing.
Nationally, about 30 people in the United States had been killed while riding electric scooters since 2018, with roughly 80% struck by drivers of cars, according to a study cited by The Conversation. The same research noted that publicly available e-scooter rides in U.S. cities had climbed to 88 million trips annually by 2019, as shared scooter programs spread rapidly through American cities.
A separate Nashville study referenced in that research found that about 80% of e-scooter and bicycle crashes happened at intersections, and about 70% occurred in daylight — with more than 60% of crashes between cars and scooters happening when a sidewalk rider collided with a driver at a driveway or crosswalk. Researchers in that study documented 52 e-scooter crashes between 2018 and 2020, including one scooter-rider fatality. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has separately reported that emergency-room-treated injuries and deaths tied to e-scooters, e-bikes and hoverboards are increasing.
No Fort Worth, Tarrant County or Texas-specific crash-trend data tied to Harden’s death has been made available, and officials have not released the identities of the drivers or further details about how fault was determined.
