Pf Mayor Makes Safety Pledge Lighting Crosswalk May Be Option After Fatality At Outlet Mall

The day after a woman was hit and killed by a truck outside the Post Falls Factory Outlets, Mayor Jim Hammond asked city engineers to make the mall crossings safer.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll do something,” he said Saturday.

The outlet’s developers in the past have said that a traffic signal would be too expensive, Hammond said.

Shannon Wilhelm, a 19-year-old mall employee, was struck Friday evening as she traversed a white-lined crosswalk on Riverbend Avenue, which bisects the shopping mall. Driver Jordan P. Tuthill, 54, told police he didn’t see her until the last minute.

No charges have been filed against Tuthill and police said it did not appear he had been speeding or that alcohol was involved.

Unnerved outlet mall workers Saturday said it was only a matter of time before someone was hurt crossing the busy fivelane avenue at night.

There are no lights at any of three crosswalks. Bev Beatty, assistant manager at Prestige outlet, said drivers can barely see pedestrians.

“When the cars are turning, they can’t see you at all unless their lights hit you right on,” she said.

Between congested holiday traffic and the shopping season, Beatty said “we don’t even think about crossing when it’s busy.”

Tamara Romagnolo, a manager at the Converse outlet almost hit a pedestrian herself the other night.

“It’s dark, dark,” she said. “I feel sorry for the family of the girl, but I also feel for the driver.”

Hammond, the only member of the Post Falls City Council involved in planning for the mall, which opened in 1991, said the city originally had considered requiring a crossing light.

“We talked about it but engineers felt it wasn’t necessary,” he said.

At first it wasn’t an issue because only one side of the street was developed.

Concerns were raised when the second phase of the outlet mall was built, but developers felt a light would be too expensive, he said.

City Councilman Scott Grant, who talked to store owners Saturday, said the logical choice would be to light a central crosswalk rather than all three.

It would cost the city less money, he said. But the stretch is so long, anxious shoppers might jaywalk where it’s convenient rather than at the light, he said.

Hammond, however, said he would expect developers to pay for whatever improvements city officials deem necessary.

, DataTimes MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition.