Police in Fairfax County, Virginia, have returned to the scene of a crash that killed a teenager and sent four others to the hospital, in hopes of preventing the next tragedy.
“We do these public announcements to let everyone know that we’re going to be out there,” said Fairfax County Police Department spokesman James Curry. “Certainly, we saw the tragic crash from last week.”
Now, police have increased their presence along Burke Centre Parkway, near the place where investigators said a speeding driver crashed into a Kia leaving the Burke Centre Shopping Center on July 18. A 17-year-old girl was killed.
“The area where we’re going to put our officers is going to based on the data,” said Curry.
Even before the crash that Tuesday, there had been 12 other crashes on the roadway this year — a rate police say is slightly behind the 41 crashes in 2021.
“We don’t guess — we look at where our crashes are, for our distracted drivers,” said Curry.
In the past three years, over 2,100 citations have been issued by police along Burke Centre Parkway.
“Certainly, speed makes crash much more significant,” said Curry. “And the faster driver go, their ability to respond to anything diminishes.”
An online petition to add a traffic light on Burke Centre Parkway has more than 2,000 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon.
