Cambridge Pedestrian Killed in Truck Accident Friday

A woman was killed in a truck accident at the corner of Magazine Street and Putnam Avenue Friday.

The Boston Globe reported that an unidentified woman believed to be in her 20s was hit by a tri-axle dump truck in the evening of October 5. At 4:41 p.m. that afternoon, the Cambridge Police Department tweeted that there had been a serious accident. Two hours later, the Middlesex district attorney’s office announced that it would be investigating the crash with Cambridge police. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Although the woman has yet to be identified, the neighborhoods around Magazine Street and Putnam Street have honored the woman at the site of the crash.Residents strung flowers around a nearby streetlight, and a makeshift memorial commemorates the place of the accident.

The crash occured within a block of two religious spaces, the Temple Eitz Chayim and the Cambridgeport Baptist Church. Speaking to the Globe, Paul Farwell, Eitz Chayim’s administrator, said that the temple’s congregants were visibly rattled by the accident. Congregants of the Cambridgeport Baptist Church were also affected — according to the Boston Herald, two church employees initiated the flower memorial.

Friday’s accident closely follows another fatality involving pedestrians and bikers on the streets of Cambridge. In September, not far from the site of Friday’s crash, an 80-year-old woman was killed in the parking lot of the Cambridge Housing Authority building.

Additionally, in June 2016, a woman was killed while biking in Inman Square. In March 2015, someone was hit by a container truck near the Whole Foods on Putnam Avenue. After the fatal bike crash in 2016, many Cambridge residents said the congested streets were contributing to an unsafe and accident-prone environment.

The City of Cambridge and Harvard have both made efforts in recent years to increase safety for walkers and bikers. In February, Harvard announced a truck safety initiative that would install side guards on University-owned trucks to keep people from getting swept underneath them. Earlier in the same month, the speed limit in Harvard Square was lowered for the second time in less than two years from 25 to 20 miles per hour.

—Staff writer Iris M. Lewis can be reached at iris.lewis@thecrimson.com.