Charlotte council member calls for streetlight-reporting initiative after pedestrian killed in hit-and-run

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Police were still searching for a driver who hit and killed a pedestrian in south Charlotte on Tuesday night and did not stop.

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, a pedestrian was hit by a vehicle near Nations Ford Road and Arrowood Road. The pedestrian, identified on Wednesday as 43-year-old Niceforo Garcia-Rufino, died at the scene of the crash.

Police identified the vehicle on Wednesday as a red Mercedes Benz, and said the vehicle had been found. The driver of the vehicle hadn’t been found yet, however, as of Wednesday evening.

In the hours after the crash, Charlotte City Council member Joi Mayo posted on social media that she wants to start a streetlight initiative. She wants to provide people with a toolkit to report streetlights that are not working.

Currently, Duke Energy installs and maintains the lights in Charlotte, and operates a website where people can report outages.

There are at least a dozen streetlights visible from the intersection of Nations Ford Road and Arrowood Road.

Layla Ferguson, who was walking through the intersection on Wednesday, said she worries about drivers even when she uses a crosswalk.

“You still don’t know, because people fly through here,” Ferguson said.

Keith Oxendine, a Charlotte resident who walks every day, urged people to be especially careful after the sun goes down.

“Got to be safe at night, especially when we cross the road,” Oxendine said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police reported the hit-and-run Tuesday night before 10 p.m.

The crash comes at a time when several pedestrian crashes have been reported in the Charlotte region, in both North Carolina and South Carolina.

The most recent high-profile case involved the death of a 6-year-old girl, who was hit by a car near a school bus stop in Charlotte last month.

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