The Chapel Hill Police Department is investigating a fatal collision that killed a pedestrian Friday night along one of the town’s busiest thoroughfares.

A release from the Town of Chapel Hill shortly after 11 p.m. said police officers responded at 7:41 p.m. to a report of a pedestrian hit by a driver in the 1800 block of Fordham Boulevard. That stretch of the highway — which runs between the intersection with Sage and Old Durham roads to the intersection with Eastowne Drive — has no sidewalks on either side.

Police said the pedestrian died at the scene of the crash. The town added in Friday’s alert that the driver of the vehicle remained at the scene as emergency responders and law enforcement arrived. As of Friday night, no other information about the incident is being made publicly available, according to police.

This marks the first fatal pedestrian crash reported in by the town government in 2025 — although two people were seriously injured in February after a hose fell off a Chapel Hill Fire truck as it drove to a car crash. There is no 2025 data on pedestrian or bicycle collisions on the town’s Vision Zero Dashboard, which tracks such incidents as part of the local government’s goal to “eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2031.” But a Town of Chapel Hill spokesperson confirmed to Chapelboro that Friday’s pedestrian crash was the first fatal one of the calendar year, and 12 total crashes involving pedestrians have been reported so far in 2025.

Chapel Hill documented and investigated six fatal pedestrian collisions from 2020 to 2024, including one along Fordham Boulevard in 2021.

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