Drivers in Louisville hit four pedestrians in a 24-hour period, killing three of them. They were four separate incidents, in four different locations, hours apart.
At 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, an off-duty Louisville Metro Police officer in an unmarked vehicle struck and killed a person who was walking near 24th Street and Bank Street, according to a statement from LMPD spokesperson Dwight Mitchell. The Jefferson County Coroner's Office later identified the victim as 17-year-old Clay Twyman.
Police said the officer was traveling east on Bank Street when he hit Twyman. The teenage boy was sent to University of Louisville Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Sgt. Matt Sanders, with LMPD, said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the police officer who was involved is still on full duty status. The department has not released the officer’s name.
Another vehicle collision involving a pedestrian also happened at 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, about 10 miles away.
At Strader Avenue and Powell Avenue in the Jacobs neighborhood, Mitchell said a driver hit a 10-year-old child. The child was taken to Norton Children’s Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The LMPD 4th Division will handle that investigation, Mitchell said.
At 6:22 a.m. Thursday, Mitchell said officers responded to a call on the Clark Memorial Bridge, also known as the Second Street Bridge. Police said an “elderly woman” was walking on the bridge when a driver hit her. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office later identified the woman as 38-year-old Aaron Nifong.
Mitchell said the LMPD Traffic Unit will continue to investigate that fatal incident. The southbound lane and both northbound lanes have been reopened to vehicle traffic, after a closure for several hours, according to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
In a fourth incident, about 30 minutes later, officers responded to a collision in the eastbound lane on Interstate 64, near Interstate 65. According to Mitchell’s statement, a man was walking in the road when an oncoming car hit him. He died at the scene. The man was later identified as 31-year-old Daniel Metheny-Rodriguez Jr., according to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office.
On Tuesday, LMPD Traffic Unit Commander Craig Browning said at a news conference there have been 19 reported fatal traffic collisions this year; six of the people who died were pedestrians hit by cars.
With the most recent incidents, the number of pedestrian deaths now stands at nine.
Earlier this year, city and state officials released Louisville Metro’s High Injury Network Map, a safety map of roads in Jefferson County. It uses crash data to determine which surface roads are the most dangerous.
Bank Street and Second Street are two of 53 corridors with the highest concentration of fatal and serious injury crashes in the city.
The map is from Louisville Metro’s Vision Zero, an transportation initiative that aims to have zero roadway fatalities by 2050. The tool is intended to be used as a guide to determine which roadways are in need of changes due to a public safety risk.
LMPD Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel said at the press conference Tuesday that Louisville Police are also working to lower traffic fatalities.
“LMPD has been tasked with an initiative to see if we can get our traffic fatalities down by 5%,” she said. “And that is an aggressive goal. That is an aggressive goal because we have seen the lives that have been lost countless, countless lives unnecessarily by distracted drivers.”
Commonwealth Attorney Gerina Whethers said Tuesday that since 2023, her office has prosecuted 139 felony charges related to vehicle collisions that resulted in fatal or serious injuries. Twenty-nine of those cases involved a person driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol.
Due to the increase in fatal collisions, Whethers said the Commonwealth Attorney’s office has revamped its Fatal Accident Support Team, a prosecutorial team that specializes in felony vehicle assaults, vehicular homicides and DUIs.
“We want to continue to promote public safety on our highways and byways,” Whethers said Tuesday. “We just simply want our citizens to be able to get from point A to point B, for them to be able to get home to their families, and be able to do what they want to do and be able to enjoy this life the way we should. We want to protect our families from these careless and distracted drivers.”
This story has been updated with the identities of the three people hit and killed by drivers.
