Police say a bicyclist was killed Sunday in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston. Credit: Adam Gerard/Flickr
The driver of a truck that hit and killed a visiting scientist from Japan working at MIT is talking with police a day after the bicycle crash Sunday in the Fenway neighborhood.
“The driver of the truck is talking to detectives and cooperating with the investigation,” police said Monday morning. Boston police initially released little information on whether the driver stopped after the crash with the bicycle or if the driver fled.
Boston police said the crash happened around 3:30 p.m. near the intersection of Beacon Street and Charlesgate West.
In a statement, MIT identified the victim as Dr. Kanako Miura, 36, who had been working at the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory since the fall of 2012.
Miura was pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses told investigators that the truck that hit her drove away, but police would not confirm to the Boston Globe that the accident was a hit-and-run.
“Our hearts go out to her friends and colleagues at MIT, and especially the Miura family, who must absorb this terrible loss from so far away,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote in an email. The school was providing grief counselors to students and staff.
The fatality comes less than a week after Boston Mayor Thomas Menino released a report on bicycle crashes in the city, and announced new efforts to reduce the number of injuries to bicyclists by 50 percent over the next seven years.
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