Eighty Year Old Man Killed in Langley Park

April 27, 2011

            While crossing New Hampshire Avenue near Metzerott Road on the morning of April 20^th, Enrique Carl Paschuales was struck and killed by a hit and run driver, according to a Prince George’s County Police report. Paschuales lived on the 8800 block of Piney Branch Road.

It was around 9:45 a.m when Paschuales crossed the street from east to west and a vehicle travelling northbound on New Hampshire Avenue struck him, said police spokesman Cpl. Mike Rodriguez.

The crossing signal displayed the stop hand which indicated not to cross to the street Rodriguez said. Yet, Paschuales did not yield to the right-of-way of the vehicle.

After the medical team arrived, Paschuales was taken to a local hospital. He was pronounced dead later on Wednesday night.

Rodriguez and the police department did not have any information about the hit and run driver or the vehicle. And because of this he said no charges were filed.

Hispanic Pedestrian Fatality Rates Higher

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Hispanics suffer a higher-than-average death and injury rate from pedestrian accidents nationally compared to other races.           

“Here, people walk to everywhere,” Mario Quiroz, a spokesman for the Silver Spring-based immigrant-advocacy group Casa de Maryland, said about his predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in a June 2008 Washington Post article by Tom Ramstack entitled, Hispanics suffer highest pedestrian death rate; Area governments urged to act. “You go walking to shopping, your laundry, your bank. Some immigrants are not used to using crosswalks,” Mr. Quiroz said. Therefore roadway dangers are greatest for new immigrants

Nationwide, 4,784 pedestrians from ethnic groups were killed in traffic accidents in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics figures. More than 80 pedestrians are killed and 2,300 injured every year in the Washington area and pedestrians make up one-fifth of the region's traffic fatalities.

Income and Geography appear to be Factors

Anne P. Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, an advocacy group for multimodal transportation planning, said in an interview in the Washington Post, “Quite often, people do not own a car, and they live in places that do not have sidewalk facilities or very poor ones.”

            “To get to transit, they have to walk,” she continued.

            However, Gloria Ohland, who has analyzed pedestrian safety for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a Washington-based planning and advocacy group, said it is simply, “It's automobile culture clashing with immigrant culture,” in an interview for an article entitled “Fatalities Higher for Latino Pedestrians; Area's Hispanic Immigrants Apt to Walk but Unaccustomed to Urban Traffic” written by Sylvia Moreno of the Washington Post. “It's a cultural-social shock here."