Portland police have not released any additional information on the circumstances surrounding the crash that seriously injured 2 other teenagers.
Updated September 14
As police continue to investigate a weekend crash on Warren Avenue that killed a 13-year-old boy and seriously injured two others, the victim has been identified as an eighth grade student from Scarborough.
In a statement to families Monday, Superintendent Diane Nadeau said Abdulrahman Mohammed came to Scarborough schools as a seventh grader after attending Biddeford schools since first grade.
“He would be best described as a friendly, fun-loving person with a big personality and someone who enjoyed time with his friends, playing soccer and basketball,” the letter said.
Portland police said a group of teens was walking on the north side of Warren Avenue around 9 p.m. Saturday when they “entered the roadway abruptly” and were hit by a vehicle being driven by a 48-year-old Portland man traveling in the same direction.
Mohammed was pronounced dead at the scene. Two other boys — a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old — were transported to Maine Medical Center, where they were treated for serious but not-life-threatening injuries, police said. Others in the group were uninjured.
In an email sent to the Portland Public Schools community Sunday afternoon, Superintendent Ryan Scallon said three Deering High School students were involved in the incident, but that he couldn’t share more information “out of respect for the privacy and wishes of the students and their families.”
Both Scarborough and Portland schools were offering counseling to students this week.
No charges have been filed against the driver, and police declined to answer additional questions Monday, including the kind of vehicle the driver was operating and where the teenagers were coming from.
According to a news release from Portland police, the group of teenagers was heading toward Riverside Street near the Interstate 95 overpass, adjacent to a complex that is home to Fitness Factory, Goldfish Swim School and the Portland Sports Complex, which hosts indoor soccer and other recreational sports leagues.
The side of the road the teenagers were traveling on does not have a sidewalk, and there are no crosswalks on the entire stretch of Warren Avenue. After the overpass, sidewalks begin again on both sides of the street where Dunkin’ and Home Depot are located. The posted speed limit is 35 mph.
Myles Smith, chair of the city’s bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, said Monday that there are also no streetlights in the vicinity.
“No sidewalk, no crosswalk, no streetlights, high speed limits — we don’t know all the facts of what happened here, but we do know that streets like these are deadly,” he said.
Smith said hundreds of kids use the sports complex daily, but it’s “impossible” to get there safely without someone driving them.
He also said that while it might be easy to say the kids should have been on the sidewalk side, there is a sidewalk in front of Aroma Joe’s that then disappears. In 2021, the overpass was replaced, and the finished product put a sidewalk on the south side, but made the shoulder on the north side smaller.
The Bicycle Coalition of Maine, which advocates for bike and pedestrian safety, called Mohammed’s death an “unimaginable loss for a family and a community.”
“Our first responsibility is to hold space for those who are grieving,” Executive Director Andrew Zarro said. “Our next responsibility is to make sure we learn everything we can from this crash and act so that another family does not have to experience this.”
Mohammed is the third pedestrian fatality in Portland this year, all in the last four months. A woman was killed in a hit-and-run in late August on Forest Avenue, and a man was killed in June on Marginal Way. Last year, there were five pedestrian deaths in Portland.
The issue has sparked a Vision Zero effort with the goal of ending serious pedestrian injuries and deaths in the city, but each incident has brought new pressure on officials to treat pedestrian safety as an emergency.
“Another tragedy on our city streets,” Councilor Anna Bullett said on social media Sunday, urging residents to attend upcoming city meetings to “let it be known that we need more resources and bold and swift Vision Zero actions.”
Councilor Wes Pelletier said because roads like Warren Avenue are more commercial-industrial corridors, people “assume it has to be this way” with high speeds and little to no pedestrian infrastructure.
“We need processes that put people before cars,” he said, pointing out that a center turning lane along Warren Avenue continues under the overpass.
In his post, Smith said the city should put out cones and paint new lines to eliminate the center turn lane in that section immediately.
“At least this would give people passing underneath it some room for error,” he said.