Greensboro moped crash turns deadly, woman dies days later

A late-night U-turn on Spring Garden Street has become a fatal crash case in Greensboro, with 21-year-old Anastasia Estrella Cooper dying five days after the wreck. Police say the collision near Eula Street happened shortly before 3 a.m. on June 14, and it is now being handled as a serious traffic-fatality investigation.

Greensboro police said officers, Greensboro Fire and Guilford County EMS responded to the scene after a Lexus SUV traveling west on Spring Garden Street made a U-turn in front of a westbound moped. The impact left both people on the moped, a man and a woman, with serious injuries. Cooper later died on June 19 from those injuries.

The driver, Makayla Kaitlynn Ouboun Theng, 24, of Graham, now faces felony death by vehicle, felony serious injury by vehicle and unsafe tires. Police had already charged Theng in connection with the same June 14 crash with driving while impaired and failing to yield resulting in serious injury. She was being held in the Alamance County Jail without bond and was scheduled to appear in court on June 22.

The Greensboro Police Department’s Crash Reconstruction Unit is leading the follow-up investigation, a step reserved for fatal and near-fatal motor vehicle crashes. That detail signals how seriously investigators are treating the collision, which unfolded on one of Greensboro’s busy east-west corridors.

Spring Garden Street also sits inside a larger city planning conversation. Greensboro’s Spring Garden Corridor plan covers the stretch from South Holden Road to South Josephine Boyd Street, a route that already carries heavy local traffic, neighborhood trips and commercial activity. The crash adds a grim public-safety layer to that corridor discussion, especially where faster-moving vehicles mix with mopeds and other vulnerable riders.

North Carolina law treats mopeds differently from motorcycles and cars, but the rules still place clear responsibilities on riders and drivers alike. The state defines a moped as a two- or three-wheeled vehicle with a motor under 50 cubic centimeters, no external shifting device and a top speed not exceeding 30 mph on level ground. Operators must be at least 16, wear a motorcycle safety helmet and register the vehicle if it is operated on a state-maintained road.

Police asked anyone with information to contact Greensboro/Guilford Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000 or submit a tip through P3 Tips. For Cooper’s family, the case now carries the weight of a preventable death, a criminal prosecution and a roadway that remains under scrutiny in the middle of Greensboro.