Residents seek safer road crossings following recent pedestrian deaths

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - For the third time this week, someone died after being hit by a car in the Twin Cities metro.

Cars zoom by, often failing to notice the pedestrians waiting to cross McKnight Road in St. Paul’s Battle Creek neighborhood.

“The cars won’t stop,” said Devansh Jaiswal. “So, you have to wait, even though there’s a pedestrian sign, so you think people will stop, but they don’t.”

Jaiswal and his girlfriend got halfway across the road when a car whizzed just a few feet by them Saturday.

“It’s a populated area and a park in the middle of a populated area, and this is the only way you can go,” he said.

Paul Sawyer added, “Signage and paint on the road is not a stand-in for good infrastructure that makes it safe for someone to cross the street.”

Others say even street lights would help.

“There needs to be a street light here,” Jaiswal said. “There is no street lights. At night, it’s impossible to see anything unless the person is wearing flashy clothes.”

“We live in the 21st century,” he added. “There needs to be less people dying on the pedestrian way.”

Meanwhile, police are still looking for any witnesses to that second auto-pedestrian accident that happened in Roseville Wednesday evening. In that incident, a man and a woman were killed while crossing the street at Larpenteur Avenue West near Rice Street. The driver in that incident did stop and is cooperating.

Saturday night, another person was killed in Inver Grove Heights. Authorities are still searching for the driver responsible.