Police are investigating a fatal car accident involving an 82-year-old woman who was fatally struck by a vehicle while crossing a Burbank street, police said Thursday.
According to Burbank Police Department spokesman Sgt. Stephen Turner, officers arrived at the intersection of West Verdugo Avenue and North Buena Vista Street around 9 a.m. Tuesday regarding a traffic collision involving a pedestrian.
Turner said detectives found a woman badly injured in the middle of the road. She was taken to a hospital, where she died. Detectives determined the woman entered the crosswalk south of Verdugo Avenue and began heading westbound across North Buena Vista Street in a marked crosswalk.
Turner said a Toyota Tundra pickup truck driver was traveling westbound on Verdugo and began to make a left turn onto southbound Buena Vista Street, striking the woman, who was identified as Maryland Charette of Burbank.
Turner said the driver remained at the scene and detectives determined that neither drugs nor alcohol played a factor in the crash. The driver was also not believed to have been speeding.
The collision remains under investigation, and no arrests have been reported.
The incident is the second fatal accident in Burbank this year. Just last month, Burbank mourned Evonnie Nicole Caceres, a 24-year-old Saugus woman who was the victim of a high-speed car accident.
She was the front-seat passenger of a speeding Dodge Challenger, which triggered a two-vehicle crash at a Burbank intersection Sept. 3, leaving Caceres with fatal injuries, Turner said in a report.
For years, local advocates have ramped up efforts to prevent further traffic violence and death, as speeding and racing-related accidents have been on the rise in Burbank.
Anyone with information regarding the traffic collision was urged to contact Detective Ryan Murphy at (818) 238-3103.
— City News Service contributed to this report.
First published in the October 14 print issue of the Burbank Leader.
