Hit-and-run on Tomball Parkway kills pedestrian, driver arrested at home

A pedestrian walking the grass median beside the Tomball Parkway feeder road near Grant Road was killed after a Chevrolet Express box van hit the curb, lost control and veered into him, turning a routine stretch of roadway into a fatal crash scene.

Deputies said the crash happened about 7:55 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in Harris County. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and authorities had not publicly identified him in the initial report. Investigators later identified the driver as Alejandro Pereyra and arrested him at home on a failure-to-stop-and-render-aid charge.

The details point to how little margin for error exists on feeder roads that carry fast-moving traffic past places where pedestrians still appear on foot. In this case, the victim was on a grass median when the van struck him, a reminder that the danger is not limited to crosswalks and intersections. A curb strike, a loss of control and a split-second drift were enough to produce a death that investigators said was avoidable if the driver had stayed at the scene and rendered aid.

The crash also fits a larger traffic-safety pattern across Texas. The Texas Department of Transportation says pedestrians make up only 1% of traffic crashes in the state but account for 19% of roadway fatalities. In 2024, Texas recorded 6,095 pedestrian-involved crashes, 772 pedestrian deaths and 1,455 serious injuries. TxDOT has also warned that most pedestrian fatalities happen at night, and that October is typically the deadliest month for walkers in Texas.

For Harris County, where the sheriff’s office says it serves more than 4.1 million residents and operates as the largest sheriff’s office in Texas, cases like this underscore the scale of the county’s roadway-safety burden. The Tomball Parkway corridor near Grant Road remains a place where traffic, speed and vulnerable pedestrians can collide with deadly consequences, and this death showed how quickly that risk can become irreversible.