The family of a woman struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in District Heights, Maryland, gathered for a vigil Monday to remember her, and also to call for action in the cases of “all the hit-and-run victims.”
Marcia Turner, 54, died on Nov. 14, when at around 7 p.m., she got off of a Metrobus after work and was waiting to cross Walker Mill Road to her apartment.
Security camera video shows how she moved to the center of the road to cross the last few lanes, and the streetlight flickered off. Then, she was struck.
“She was such a beautiful, beautiful soul, had the most infectious smile that you ever wanted to see. And she loved everybody. She was a god-fearing woman,” Delcina Greenfield, Turner’s mother, said at the vigil outside her daughter’s apartment.
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Jeffrey Turner can’t believe someone just left his niece in the road like that.
“This was not roadkill. This was a human being. This was an angel. This was a lovely person who wouldn’t touch a fly,” he said.
The video shows that a dark SUV was the striking vehicle. Prince George’s County police are still searching for it.
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Turner’s family is calling for change: better lighting on that section of Walker Mill Road, and a pedestrian crosswalk and signal in front of the large apartment complex.
Octavia Greenfield said she was shocked and angered to learn that fewer than 20% of the county’s hit-and-run cases, her beloved aunt now among them, are solved.
“Police are treating hit and runs, not just my aunt’s, but treating hit and runs as regular accidents, when in actuality, they’re committing murders,” Octavia Greenfield, the victim’s niece, said.
News4’s timed the streetlight that flickered off just as Turner was struck. It goes on for 50 seconds, then off for 50 seconds.
Her family would like to see it replaced.
Turner was the ninth person to be killed by a hit-and-run driver in the county so far this year. There were eight deaths in 2021, and seven in 2020.
