PORTLAND, Ore. — A pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run crash on Southeast Division Street in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood early Thursday morning, according to police.
Officers were called to the 6500 block of Southeast Division Street just after 12:30 a.m. on a report of a pedestrian struck by a vehicle, and arrived to find the man deceased, according to a press release from the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).
The driver who struck the pedestrian left the scene without providing aid and before police arrived, and the officers were not able to locate it. The Major Crash Team responded to the scene to assume control of the investigation.
Police did not release the name of the victim, citing the need to confirm their identity and notify their family first.
Thursday's incident is the fourteenth traffic fatality in Portland so far this year and the eighth pedestrian death, according to PPB spokesman Lt. Nathan Sheppard. Ten of those deaths occurred in January alone.
The high rate of traffic deaths continues a trend from last year, which was Portland's worst year for traffic deaths since 1990, according to the Portland Bureau of Transportation's Vision Zero Traffic Crash Report released last month, with 63 traffic fatalities recorded across the city.
Pedestrian deaths accounted for 27 of those fatalities, a 50% increase from the year before, and 70% of pedestrians killed were homeless — a statistic that Mayor Ted Wheeler cited when he issued a recent emergency order to ban camping along freeways and high-crash corridors.