Woman killed in Raleigh hit-and-run on New Bern Avenue

A 54-year-old woman was killed after a driver struck her in the 3100 block of New Bern Avenue outbound, near Wake Inn and Shanta Drive, turning a familiar east Raleigh roadway into the center of a hit-and-run investigation. Raleigh police identified the victim as Nicole Shawnette White.

Officers were called to the scene around 9 p.m. Friday after a reported crash involving a pedestrian. Police said White was trying to cross New Bern Avenue when she was hit. Preliminary information indicated she was crossing outside a crosswalk. She was taken to a hospital, where she died from her injuries.

The driver did not remain at the scene and was still being sought Saturday morning. Investigators were working to identify and locate the vehicle involved, and police asked anyone with information to contact Raleigh police or CrimeStoppers.

The crash landed on a stretch of New Bern Avenue that many Raleigh residents use every day to reach work, shopping and transit. It is also the kind of arterial road where speed, wide lanes and long crossing distances can make a simple trip across the street deadly, especially after dark. White’s death is a sharp reminder that pedestrian crashes in Wake County are not confined to highways or interstates. They can happen in the middle of an urban corridor where people expect to move on foot.

Raleigh has said it is the second-fastest growing large metro area in the United States, and city leaders have tied that growth to a broader push to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries. Under Vision Zero, Raleigh’s goal is to eliminate those deaths by 2040. The city reported 59 traffic fatalities in 53 fatal crashes in 2022, including 24 pedestrian deaths, a toll that underscores how often people on foot bear the brunt of roadway danger.

New Bern Avenue is already in the middle of a major transformation. Wake BRT construction is underway on the corridor, with the city saying the project is intended to improve transit and pedestrian connectivity between downtown Raleigh, WakeMed and New Hope Road. For a corridor with that much daily traffic and so much future investment, White’s death raises a hard question: whether the street is being made safer quickly enough for the people already crossing it now.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crash maps, which track pedestrian and bicyclist crashes statewide and go back to 2007, offer one way to measure how often roads like New Bern Avenue have become danger zones. For families, that data point does not matter nearly as much as the one Raleigh police are still chasing: who was driving, why they fled and whether another pedestrian death could have been prevented.