An aspiring nurse, 24-year-old Mariam Idowu Adeleke traveled more than 5,000 miles from her home in Nigeria to pursue her education in Baltimore only to lose her life while trying to cross Security Boulevard on Wednesday evening.
"Everyone is devastated---my mom, her mom... everyone is still in shock like until this moment," said a cousin who requests we conceal her identity.
She now speaks for a family who just celebrated Mariam's graduation from Baltimore City Community College now grieving over her sudden death.
"Everyone is still crying and can't believe she's actually gone."
Gone like the car, which struck and killed Mariam.
It appears the African national had just got off her shift at Popeye's restaurant on Rolling Road on Wednesday night when she headed for the bus stop on nearby Security Boulevard.
"She was not crossing in a crosswalk,” said Ofc. Jennifer Peach of the Baltimore County Police Department, “It was dark outside. Again, it was a little bit after 10 o'clock at night so it's entirely possible that the first vehicle that struck her didn't see her at all as she was crossing the street."
That car, described only as a dark colored sedan, just kept going, as the impact knocked the young woman into the path of a second car, which ran over her body sealing her fate.
That car did stop, but it is the hit-and-run vehicle, which is now the focus of an ongoing search.
"We expect that vehicle probably has some sort of front-end damage or hood damage, possibly even crack windshield or shattered window damage," said Peach.
Police are asking anyone who might have seen anything that night or who have information about that vehicle to contact them, while the family is making a plea of its own to the person who was behind the wheel.
"I don't know who you are, but it's very hurting to know that you just can hit someone and don't even turn back like she was a human being,” said Mariam’s cousin, “It's not like you hit a deer and okay, you see that it's a deer, but you hit a person and you just kept going."
