(Photo by Davis Bates)

Update 10/15/2018

Seventy-year-old Carol Joan Tomason of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, died on Friday after she was struck in a crosswalk on H Street NW near McPherson Square. The driver of a 2016 Chevrolet pickup truck struck Tomason while making a left-hand turn in an intersection.

D.C. Fire and EMS transported Tomason to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Original

An adult woman is in critical condition after being struck by a person driving a black truck at the intersection of 15th and H streets NW this morning.

D.C. Fire and EMS received a call about the incident at 9:11 a.m. and showed up on scene at 9:14 a.m., says Doug Buchanan, public information officer for D.C. Fire. A Twitter report said the injured person was a cyclist, but Buchanan says there were no signs of a bicycle.

The woman was transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, Buchanan says.

Another day, another cyclist hit by a vehicle in our nation’s capital. There are DC residents of all stripes dying in the streets just trying to get to work or live their lives and @DDOTDC is doing nothing about it. This is a full blown crisis. #VisionZeroDC #bikeDC pic.twitter.com/W0qyTeYPro

— Davis Bates (@davisbates) October 12, 2018

Leah Fantle, a cyclist just leaving a nearby Zeke’s Coffee, saw the aftermath of the incident, she told DCist by email. Fantle was walking her bike, waiting for the light to turn at the southeast corner of the intersection, when the driver hit the woman with the truck. Fantle says she didn’t see the moment the woman was hit, but saw her lying on the ground afterward. A black Chevy Colorado pickup truck was stopped with its back wheels still halfway in the intersection, Fantle says, a Starbucks cup crushed under the front wheel and coffee splashed across the street.

Bystanders rushed to the woman’s aid—someone laid a knitted scarf over her, and a person with medical training came to check her pulse as they waited for paramedics. Fantle says that she helped block the intersection with her bike.

“I hope I never have to see something like this again. This city deserves a better bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, traffic enforcement, and less self-absorbed driving culture,” Fantle says.

After the accident, Fantle described what she saw in a Facebook post.

“Witnessed a horrific pedestrian crash this morning at a crosswalk downtown—the woman hit was thrown/skidded onto the pavement by a left-turning pickup truck, unconscious and bleeding from her nose,” she wrote. “I overheard a corner of the driver’s statement—’I tried to make eye contact and thought I was clear to go.'”