The stories almost always look nearly identical to this Journal tidbit from October 6th:

A pedestrian was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after being struck by a vehicle Wednesday night, Albuquerque police say.

The incident happened at Central and San Pablo NE, according to a news release from police spokeswoman Rebecca Atkins.

“The pedestrian was walking south across Central Ave. not in a crosswalk, and was hit by the vehicle,” Atkins wrote. “The pedestrian was transported to (the University of New Mexico Hospital) with life threatening injuries. Speed and alcohol do not appear to be a factor in this crash.”

An earlier news release said the pedestrian was in critical condition.

The past few years, Better Burque has annually gone through the IPRA process to get Albuquerque Police Department pedestrian fatality initial crash and supplemental reports. The idea is to at least somewhat personalize these deaths beyond what we see in the almost always identical “stories” such as that quoted above.

We received fulfillment of our request for 2021 yesterday (it takes a while). Unlike prior years, where we tended to just pick a few of the many and tell you a little or a lot about those few cases, we’re going to tell you at least a bit about every single person and what happened to them. In the case of 2021, all thirty-eight persons, in chronological order of crashes/deaths.

We’ll begin next time with the story of an elderly Vietnamese American woman trying to cross 4th St. at Griegos on 1.11.21 to get back home after buying some ear-wax remover at Walgreens. You may not be surprised to learn she was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

More about that woman, Ut Thi Nguyen, and her death next time on Better Burque.