Bloomington police seek SUV driver who killed woman in crash on south side
Bloomington police are looking for an SUV driver who on Saturday evening (Jan. 27) hit and killed a woman on Walnut Street Pike in the south part of town.
In a news release issued on Friday afternoon (Feb. 2), police say they are looking for a ”middle-aged, dark-complected man dressed in a suit” who had pulled over his SUV in the vicinity of South Walnut Street Pike and East Burks Drive on Saturday, Jan. 27, around 6:45 p.m.
That intersection is just north of the Bloomington city limits.
According to the news release, a passerby reported the driver of the pulled-over SUV said he believed he had just hit a deer. The vehicle in question is described in the news release as a “large, dark-colored sport utility vehicle.” It is believed that the front of the SUV was damaged in the crash.
It was not a deer that the man apparently struck, but rather a woman who was found dead the next day in a ditch beside the road.
Bloomington police are asking anyone with information about the SUV or the driver of the SUV to call detective Chris Scott at (812) 349-3382.
The dead woman was found on Jan. 28 (Sunday) afternoon when someone reported what appeared to be a body off the west side of South Walnut Street Pike, according to the news release.
Officers found the body lying in the ditch in a patch of brush. According to the news release, the body was identified by the Monroe County coroner’s office as a 37-year-old woman.
An autopsy conducted on Jan. 31 showed that the woman had several injuries consistent with being struck by a vehicle, the news release says. Police were able to locate surveillance footage from a parking lot near the spot where the woman had been found. The video showed the woman being struck by a vehicle, according to the release.
The woman is described in the news release as “transient.” The BPD defines “transient” in its general police order on encampments as someone “who lacks stable housing or employment and stays in one place for brief periods of time” and “someone who moves from place to place, just passing through the area, and is not staying for a long time.”
That’s contrasted with the general police order’s definition of a “person experiencing homelessness,” which is “an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, a stable residence, or any residence at all,…”
