Pedestrian involved in Cambridge crash succumbs to injuries

A 74-year-old pedestrian involved in Sunday’s Cambridge crash has died from her injuries, State Police said.

JuZhen Feng, a grandmother and retired teacher who lived in Cambridge and loved to take walks, succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday at Massachusetts General Hospital, police and her family said.

“This is so difficult,” one of her two sons, Henry Middlezong, 49, told the Herald. “I drove from New York when I was told what happened. I didn’t know if it was real or a dream. I was at her bedside when she died. She never woke up, so I never got to say anything to her.”

At about 8:15 a.m. Sunday, troopers from the State Police Boston Barracks responded to reports of a pedestrian struck by a pickup truck on Memorial Drive westbound near Ames Street. Callers reported that the pedestrian was trapped under a parked vehicle, police said.

First responders extricated Feng from under a parked sedan that was not involved in the incident, police said.

She was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital. The driver of the 2019 Ford F150 pickup, a 48-year-old Medford man whose name has not been released, was uninjured and remained on the scene, police said.

A preliminary investigation found that Feng walked into the travel lane from in between two parked vehicles, directly in front of the pickup, police said. The crash remains under investigation, they said.

“I’m waiting anxiously for their findings,” Middlezong said. “I just want to know what happened.”

Feng had four grandsons and was an elementary school teacher in China before she emigrated to the U.S. in 1999, he said. After she settled in Cambridge, she worked at local supermarkets, Middlezong said. But even after she retired, she remained active at the local senior center and frequently went for walks along Memorial Drive from Central Square to the Anderson Memorial Bridge, which leads to Harvard Square, just to stay fit, he said.

“She was very approachable,” Middlezong said. “I’m sure she’d love to be remembered as someone who was always smiling and always ready to help people.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2x6gTDm