Fairfax County police are investigating a hit-and-run crash on Franconia Road in Springfield that resulted in a pedestrian’s death.
Officers were dispatched to Franconia Road at Elder Avenue near Frontier Plaza around 6:10 a.m. after passersby reported seeing a vehicle that drove off the road, hitting a pole, according to scanner traffic on Open MHz.
A responding officer found an unresponsive man “lying down inside the bushes.” Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department units soon confirmed that the man had died, and police determined that he was a pedestrian.
“It looks like there was no ejection from the vehicle itself,” an officer said at 6:21 a.m. “Right now, we have no driver.”
A witness at the scene said they saw the possible driver “grab a license plate after the accident and run off towards 7-Eleven,” the officer said at 6:24 a.m.
Franconia Road was closed at Elder Avenue while Crash Reconstruction Unit detectives investigate, according to the Fairfax County Police Department, which advised drivers to “use an alternate route.”
In an update published on Saturday (Sept. 14), the FCPD identified the pedestrian as Julio Cesar Pasassi, a 43-year-old Springfield resident. Detectives believe he was walking west on the Franconia Road sidewalk along the eastbound lanes when the driver of an eastbound 2012 Volkswagen Jetta “drove off the roadway and struck” him.
“The driver of the Volkswagen abandoned the vehicle at the scene and fled before police arrived,” the FCPD said. “The investigation into the crash continues as detectives work to identify the driver of the Volkswagen.”
The department is asking anyone with information to contact its Crash Reconstruction Unit at 703-280-0543 or to send an anonymous tip through Crime Solvers.
Screenshot via Google Maps
