Woman killed in apparent hit-and-run on poorly lit street

Police are investigating a hit-and-run crash that killed a 26-year-old woman Monday on a south-side street that a resident described as perilously dark for pedestrians.

Officers found Porshae Owens, Indianapolis, about 9:30 p.m. on the side of the road in the 2200 block of National Avenue, just southwest of I-65 and Keystone Avenue, according to an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department news release.

Owens died later at Eskenazi Hospital. The Marion County coroner and IMPD determined Owens was struck by a vehicle.

The driver fled, and police found no witnesses. Accident investigators called on homicide detectives to assist in the investigation.

Police said there are streetlights on the industrial stretch of road where Owens was found, but there is no sidewalk, and a lifelong resident of the area said the street is poorly lit.

"It's very dark here," said Jim Pough, 51, who has lived in the same house on National his whole life. The closest streetlight to the accident is very faint and doesn't work properly, he added.

"It flicks on and off, and provides a small island of light," Pough said. "It's been doing that for 15 or 20 years."

IMPD crash investigator Doug Heustis said the street is partly illuminated by lights on the side of a nearby commercial building. Another streetlight is about a block from the one Pough said is broken. Owens was found between the two.

According to crash data compiled by IndyStar, the pedestrian fatality is the only one on National in at least 15 years.

IndyStar this month reported that a 35-year moratorium on streetlights and a two-decade lull in sidewalk construction have left many neighborhoods with poorly lit streets and few sidewalks. The combination likely has contributed to the city's pedestrian death toll, IndyStar found. Since the streetlight ban was imposed, 585 pedestrians were killed on Marion County streets by the end of 2015.

IMPD said the fatality Monday was the seventh this year. In 2015, IMPD reported that 27 pedestrians were killed — the most in one year since the ban.

Pough said National Avenue is well-traveled on foot by students from the University of Indianapolis and elderly residents going to Keystone Avenue businesses.

"We have a lot of low-income people who don't drive passing through because this is the street they take to the stores," he said. "And the cars are just flying by."

The woman's death was the second hit-and-run fatality of a pedestrian on a dark street in five days. Thursday, 89-year-old Horace Rounds was killed after leaving a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Center in the 5500 block of Michigan Road at 6 a.m. The driver of that car is still at large.

Rounds was the third elderly resident from the Bishop T. Garrott Benjamin Senior Living Center, 4720 N. Michigan Road, to be killed in five years.

Mayor Joe Hogsett recently fulfilled a campaign promise and ended the moratorium. He has vowed to install 100 new streetlights. But none of the first 25 lights is planned for National Avenue or Michigan Road.

Call IndyStar reporter Vic Ryckaert at (317) 444-2701. Follow him on Twitter: @vicryc.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6418. Follow him on Twitter: @john_tuohy.

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