Driver charged after Chapel Hill crosswalk crash sends 2 middle school girls to hospital
Update: The names of the victims in Friday’s wreck, which appeared in an earlier version of this story, were removed at the request of one of the parents.
A crash that sent two Chapel Hill middle-school students to the hospital on New Year’s Eve has renewed calls for the town to do something about speeding cars and to keep pedestrians safe.
The driver involved in the accident has been charged, Chapel Hill police announced late Wednesday, just two days before a planned protest walk. Organizers are asking residents to bring signs to the crosswalk in front of Phillips Middle School on Estes Drive at 5 p.m. Friday. The group plans to walk to East Franklin Street and back.
The seventh- and eighth-grade students were in the midblock crosswalk, returning home around 5:30 p.m. Friday, when they were hit, neighbors and school officials said.
Both girls were taken to the hospital, and police said in a news release Wednesday the 13-year-old girl remains at UNC Hospitals with life-threatening injuries. The 14-year-old was released from the hospital and is recovering from serious injuries, they said.
The police investigation found that the driver, Norma Martin, 69, of Durham, who was heading east toward Franklin Street, did not stop for the girls, who were in the marked crosswalk, the release stated. Other drivers heading west toward Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard did stop for the girls, police said.
Martin was charged Wednesday with failing to yield to pedestrians in a clearly marked crosswalk or regular pedestrian crossing, the release said.
The News & Observer reached out to the girls’ parents Wednesday.
Lynn Zwack, a teacher at Estes Hills Elementary School, said she was at the hospital and not available for comment about her daughter or her friend.
“We are focusing on our daughter right now and would greatly appreciate thoughts and prayers,” Zwack said in a text message.
Mayor Pro Tem Karen Stegman responded to that sentiment at the opening of Wednesday’s council meeting with a statement about the wreck. The town is looking at how to make the area more safe until pedestrian and bike improvements start in the spring, she said.
“We want to extend our thoughts and prayers to the two middle-school students who were badly injured on New Year’s Eve,” Stegman said. “Their families and friends are in our thoughts and have been since that time. We are devastated that this has happened, and we know that it has been a traumatic impact for our community.”
New Year’s Eve tragedy
Anne Goldstein, Zwack’s neighbor who lives near the school, posted updates this week to neighbors in emails and on social media. It’s important to make people realize they need to yield to pedestrians, she said, and the town can do something about that.
“They just want to make sure that it’s really clear that the girls were using the crosswalk correctly, that they know how to cross the street, that they were observing traffic laws, that they were getting called home prior to it getting dark,” she told The N&O in a phone interview Tuesday.
Goldstein said she was the first person to arrive on the scene, describing in a shaky voice how she heard the crash while doing laundry and ran out to help.
The girls were wearing matching Converse tennis shoes, she said, and one was lying on the sidewalk beside a New Year’s Eve hat.
Earlier, her 11-year-old son had seen the girls playing a kazoo, Goldstein said in an email to the town late Friday.
As she blocked the scene from her son, who ran behind bringing a phone so she could call 911, Goldstein said she saw the driver stop and get out of her car. The woman was cooperative, she said.
Emergency responders took both girls to the hospital.
Interim Phillips Middle Principal Tiffany Cheshire notified students and families about the accident in a letter Saturday. The letter, which named the girls, asked families to “keep both students and their families in your thoughts.”
The school will have counselors and other support available to help staff and students as they return from the holidays, she said.
Speeding, ignoring crosswalks
Concerns about speeding and drivers failing to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk are not new, and several residents have emailed the mayor and Town Council since hearing about the accident.
Estes Drive is one of a handful of east-west corridors between Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and traffic there is almost always steady, backing up nearly half a mile in both directions in the morning and the evening. School traffic, which congregates on Estes Drive, adds to the congestion and the frustration.
Now, with construction about to start on the Aura Chapel Hill project at the Estes-Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard intersection and a townhome development proposed next door, the worries are growing.
This fall, Goldstein put buckets of brightly colored flags on both sides of the street, so that children and others trying to cross could wave a flag to get drivers’ attention. It’s a strategy that her former city of Kirkland, Washington, used to improve pedestrian safety, she said, and one she suggested to Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger in a phone call this week.
A larger obstacle, such as a barrel, also would be good to place in the crosswalk, she said.
“I cross there four times a day, and I see kids dropped off from the bus at the bus stop right there unable to cross in the morning,” she said. “They stand there for ages, and oftentimes, I’ll run up and I’ll grab a flag, and I’ll help them across the street.”
The town identified the crosswalk as a “critical priority” in planning documents from 2009 and again in 2013.
Over $2.3 million in federal and local money was set aside for construction, and in 2016, the council approved the Estes Drive bike and pedestrian connectivity project. Construction was slated to start in 2018, when the town installed a “yield to pedestrians” sign and temporarily increased police patrols after getting a number of complaints.
But the project languished, largely because of the years-long federal funding process, which required multiple agencies to review and approve the work, town spokesman Ran Northam said. The N.C. Department of Transportation gave its final authorization last spring, he said, and the town started again to prepare for 18 months of detours and construction.
But by November, there was another delay, pending the relocation of gas lines. The power company was hesitant to do that with winter closing in, Town Manager Maurice Jones told the council, but working around the gas line could create more challenges and add roughly $250,000 in additional costs for the town.
The project is now scheduled to start in the spring.
More immediate improvements
This week, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools officials reached out to police and the town about more immediate steps that could improve safety at the crossing, spokesman Andy Jenks said. The town’s Bike and Pedestrian Team also is working with NCDOT to look at additional safety measures, Northam said.
The Police Department also conducts regular speed and pedestrian-safety checks where problems are reported. Estes Drive will be getting more attention this month, according to a town news release issued Wednesday about three planned speed-enforcement operations in addition to regular patrols.
Police records obtained by The N&O show only two other accidents involving a pedestrian were reported in that stretch of road since 2018. Drivers were cited in 2018 and in 2019 for failing to slow down to avoid an accident; the pedestrians were not seriously injured.
Records also show that from 2018 to 2021, police ticketed 45 people on that stretch of Estes Drive — 24 for speeding.
It’s not enough, residents said in interviews and in social media posts. Goldstein said she went door-to-door over the weekend encouraging neighbors to send their concerns to Hemminger and the council.
Friday’s accident is the result of delaying needed safety improvements for way too long, she and others said.
Katharine Kollins, another protest organizer who lives near the school, said she has emailed the town for nearly six years. She sees the problems every day while taking her children to school, she told The N&O by phone Tuesday.
Sometimes they cross down the street from the crosswalk, where the visibility is better, Kollins said. A few times, while waiting at the crosswalk, drivers leaving the school parking lot who didn’t see her on the right while trying to turn left have run into her, she said.
Fortunately, they were never going fast enough to cause injury.
The town can’t keep putting this off,” Kollins said. “I ride my bike on Estes every week to get out of town, and I’m petrified the whole time I’m on the road. There’s nowhere else to go. There is no alternative for a cyclist.”
Hemminger did not return The N&O’s call Wednesday seeking comment.
This story was originally published January 5, 2022 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Driver charged after Chapel Hill crosswalk crash sends 2 middle school girls to hospital."
