A pedestrian died early Sunday morning after being struck by a vehicle in a parking lot in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, according to the Denver Police Department. The collision happened around 2 a.m. in the 4600 block of North Peoria Street, and the driver stayed at the scene while the crash was reported to police right away.
Police spokesperson Kurt Barnes said the crash was immediately reported to police and that the driver remained at the scene, according to The Denver Post. The pedestrian was taken to a hospital, where they were later pronounced dead. As of Sunday, the Denver Police Department said it had no further information to share about the circumstances of the crash or the identities of the two people involved. In a separate report, 9News described a pedestrian crash near Peoria Street and Tennessee Avenue at 8:15 p.m.
A Corridor Already Flagged for Danger
The crash site sits along North Peoria Street, a stretch of roadway that the city has designated part of its High Injury Network — the roughly 5% of Denver’s street miles where about half of all fatal crashes and serious injuries occur, the city’s data shows. In June, the City and County of Denver laid out plans for its Peoria Street HSIP 23 Vision Zero Project, which calls for new signals and median enhancements at Montbello intersections along North Peoria Street, including at 44th and 46th Avenues.
Even though Sunday’s crash happened in a parking lot rather than on the street itself, Colorado’s careless driving statute still applies. Under Colorado Revised Statute § 42-4-1402, the state’s careless driving laws extend to private property open to the public, including commercial parking lots, meaning drivers remain bound by the same standard of care they would face on a public road. Separately, state law under Colorado Revised Statute § 42-4-1601 requires any driver involved in a crash causing injury or death to stop immediately and stay at the scene, a duty the driver in Sunday’s crash appears to have met, per police.
Part of a Troubling Pattern Along Peoria Street
Sunday’s death adds to a string of serious crashes that have struck the same Montbello corridor in recent months. In August, a pedestrian was hospitalized with serious injuries after being struck near North Peoria Street and East 47th Avenue, a crash in which the motorist also remained on scene, Hoodline previously reported in its piece on a fourth serious Peoria Street wreck. That same month, a motorist died in a crash at East 39th Avenue and Peoria, another stretch of the corridor marked for danger…