A 30-year-old woman has died after she was hit by a car last Friday riding her bicycle on The Plaza, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said Monday.
Kristie Nicole Crowder was riding an electric bicycle just after 5 p.m. near the 1400 block of The Plaza, police said. That's a block from Central Avenue and the strip of popular businesses at the heart of the Plaza Midwood neighborhood. Riding east on Hamorton Place, she entered the intersection with The Plaza.
A driver in a 2013 Honda Insight struck Crowder, who hit the side of the compact car and its windshield before she was thrown back onto the road, police said. First responders found Crowder unconscious and rushed her to Atrium Health's main hospital. Crowder died the next afternoon, police said.
The driver, a 52-year-old woman, was screened at the site of the crash and found not to be impaired. The investigation into the crash is ongoing, police said. Investigators did not say if the driver is expected to face any charges.
According to her website, Crowder was a capital markets analyst and photographer who grew up in Morganton and graduated from UNC Charlotte in 2015. She also formerly worked as a high school math teacher. When not working, she wrote that traveling with friends was her favorite thing to do.
"Seeing the world is my ultimate goal and love any chance I am given to do so," Crowder wrote.
Finished talking to the family. We're going to put up a ghost bike in NoDa where she liked to be, and not at the scene of the crash. Her favorite flowers were sunflowers. Will be in contact with a family friend to help with fundraising and family has asked to be kept updated...
— John Holmes III ☀️🚲 (@JHolmesLives) January 9, 2023
Local bicycle safety advocates said they plan to set up a "ghost bike," or a bicycle painted white, to honor Crowder in NoDa.
A GoFundMe set up by Crowder's friends and family said she had chosen to donate her organs in the event of her death.
