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Driver Fatally Strikes Pedestrian in Auburn Gresham and Flees the Scene

5:45 PM CST on January 8, 2016

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The crash site. Image: Google Street View

Police are searching for the motorist who struck and killed Linnes Walker, 55, in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood last week. In the early evening of December 28, Walker, of the 7500 block of South May, walked to nearby Colony Food & Liquors, 7555 South Racine, which he usually visited twice a day, ABC reported. When the store didn’t have the item Walker was looking for, he headed down the street to another shop, according to Colony’s manager.

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Linnes Walker

As he returned from the second store, at 6:54 p.m. the driver of a blue SUV struck him in front of a Popeye's at 7617 South Racine, just south of Colony, police said. The crash was captured on by the shop’s security camera. Following the collision, the motorist entered the restaurant's parking lot, then fled eastbound, according to police.

Walker was transported to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. He was pronounced dead on December 30 at 1:55 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

"Why would you hit somebody and keep going. That is a human being," the victim’s mother Mae Walker told ABC. "You don't know if he was dead or alive but you just drove away and left him laying there like he didn't belong to anybody. If you have any heart, any conscience, any feeling about somebody else, please turn yourself in."

Police are currently searching for the driver. Anyone with information about the crash is encouraged to call Major Accidents at 312-745-4521.

Fatality Tracker: 2015 Chicago pedestrian and bicyclist deaths
Pedestrian: 33 (14 were hit-and-run crashes)
Bicyclist: 7 (two were hit-and-run crashes)

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