DULUTH, Minn. — Police have identified the pedestrian who was struck and killed by a vehicle Tuesday in Duluth, while the driver remains jailed and awaits vehicular homicide charges.
Donna Ruth Estrem, 62, of Duluth was struck and killed by an SUV at about 12:40 p.m. Tuesday near the intersection of London Road and 40th Avenue, in the city’s Congdon Park neighborhood, according to the Duluth Police Department.
A witness told the Forum News Service that the victim was hit and thrown into an electrical box by a Mercury Mountaineer that had apparently skidded off London Road and come to a rest in front of the Ecumen Lakeshore senior living facility.
Officers suspected that the driver, a 49-year-old Superior, Wis., woman, was impaired, and she was taken to a local hospital for a blood draw. Theresa Marie Katzmark remained in the St. Louis County Jail on Wednesday on a preliminary charge of criminal vehicular homicide.
A formal charging decision from the St. Louis County attorney’s office is due Thursday morning, though a judge could grant an extension to allow an investigation to continue.
London Road was closed between 40th and 26th avenues east for much of the afternoon Tuesday, and investigators on scene could be seen measuring and marking skid marks and taking photographs of the crash site and the roadway.
A red Mountaineer with front bumper damage was parked near the entrance to Ecumen, cordoned off by crime scene tape and a tent erected alongside it. Estrem was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Witness Colleen Murray said that she was driving a bus down 40th Avenue when she witnessed the crash. She said the SUV was already parked in the grass when she arrived, and that the driver was talking with an older pedestrian.
Murray said the conversation ended, with the pedestrian walking away and the driver appearing that she was going to back up, when the SUV lurched forward. The pedestrian was struck and thrown against a large metal electrical box on the street corner, according to Murray’s account.
“It was bad,” she said Tuesday. “… I just seen her run her into that thing. It was awful.”
Police said they established probable cause to believe the driver was “under the influence of a controlled substance.” The two women were not known to each other, according to police.
Katzmark, who is a registered nurse in Minnesota, does not have any criminal convictions listed in a search of Minnesota and Wisconsin court records.