December Fatality on Market Street may have Passed in Silence

It has seemed like the Police always announced when in a crash a driver killed a vulnerable person outside of a car, but a recent fatality may have gone by without public statement.

Apparently a person died - via Twitter

A reader writes:

Our neighborhood also had a reported pedestrian death on Market St. @ Baker St NE on Dec. 4. The woman was on a scooter, so not sure if she would be considered a pedestrian. I called the SPD to ask why it wasn't reported. They said once there is an investigation, they cannot release any information.

She was a long term resident of the neighborhood.

Baker Street runs north-south along Barrack Field and is very near Garnet and the RR as it crosses Market. This is a tricky place to cross. There are signalized crosswalks only at the major intersections of Capitol and 17th, more than five blocks apart, and there is a striped crosswalk at 15th. All other corners have only the theoretical variety of unmarked crosswalk, which drivers find very convenient to ignore. Market Street is signed for 30mph here, but it is four lanes and zoomy, and the 50th and 85th percentile speeds are certain to be higher.

As you can see from the tweet, the Salem Police did not announce any death or that a vulnerable user of the road was involved. It did not occasion any articles in the news, either. It had seemed to be a lesser kind of crash, all too ordinary.

But it may have been a major crash with a death instead.

(If more details can be confirmed, this post may be updated, or even deleted, revised, and reposted entirely. There might also be more to say about police reporting standards, as it seems strange for a death to pass by without further remark or announcement. For the moment, this is a placeholder.)