SAN ANTONIO – Residents on Da Foste Avenue gathered Thursday to address speeding in the neighborhood, two days after a 70-year-old woman was hit and killed by a driver while sitting on her front porch.
Janice Walker, 70, was known to sit on the front porch with her mom and speak to the neighbors, Armond Hathaway said.
“They sit out on the porch almost every evening, smoke cigarettes and drink Dr. Pepper and laugh and be friendly,” Hathaway said. “I usually walk on the trail, and they usually greet me when I go and greet me back.”
However, on Tuesday evening, a driver rounded the corner on Da Foste Ave and hit and killed Walker while she was on her porch.
The San Antonio Police Department is investigating, but the driver left the scene before police arrived.
“I’m gonna miss her,” Hathaway said.
The neighborhood association meets every second Tuesday evening, but this week — because of Veterans Day — the meeting was held on Thursday.
Neighbors added speeding to the meeting agenda to address reckless drivers in their neighborhood.
“It’s a shame that a tragedy would have to happen for us to get more involved in looking at and doing another traffic study,” Hathaway said. “But we’ve already filled out the application for another traffic to do Da Foste.”
Several of the neighbors hope to get speed bumps placed on Da Foste Avenue. However, it’s not the only road in the neighborhood experiencing speedy drivers.
“We’ve been having speeding problems on Honey and Gay (boulevards) late at night,” neighbor Renee Davis said.
“What we had was people going up and down two streets, major streets, very quickly,” Ken Lowe said. “So, what we did, we requested that the city put speed bumps in.”
After fighting for it for more than a year, according to Lowe, speed bumps were installed on Honey Boulevard about three or four months ago.
“This happened at 11 o’clock at night,” neighbor Renee Watson said. “I’d be very interested in ‘were the street lights on?’, ‘were the tennis court’s lights on?’, so you can see there’s a house there,” Watson questioned.
If you have any information about the person who hit and killed Janice Walker, contact SAPD.
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