Man Dies After Hit-and-Run on Gallatin Pike in Nashville

A grocery cart, the kind shoppers wheel through parking lots and along dark stretches of road, is what investigators say a man was pushing when a southbound truck struck him on Gallatin Pike near Myatt Drive at about 1:40 a.m., knocking him into the roadway. By the time police arrived, Metro Nashville Police say, the man was dead — run over a second and third time, once by a red sedan and once by a motorcycle, neither of which stopped.

Three Impacts in the Dark

The sequence, laid out in a preliminary MNPD investigation reported by WZTV and published by FOX 17, is what makes this crash unusual. The truck driver did stop. He pulled over, walked to a nearby parking lot, and called 911. Investigators say he showed no signs of impairment. It was while he was on the phone seeking help, police say, that the pedestrian lying in the road was struck again — this time by two other vehicles whose drivers never stayed at the scene.

No Crosswalk, No Signal at Myatt Drive

Gallatin Pike is one of Nashville’s busiest corridors, a commercial strip where pedestrians regularly cross outside of marked areas. In this case, MNPD noted that the stretch near Myatt Drive has no painted crosswalks and no pedestrian traffic control devices, a detail that frames how exposed someone on foot would be there at 1:40 in the morning.

Truck Driver Cooperates; Two Vehicles Fled

The victim has not been identified. Police have not released his name, his age, or where he was headed with the cart. What they have released is a description of the moments that matter most: the initial collision, the driver’s decision to stop and call for help, and the two subsequent strikes by vehicles that fled. MNPD’s Traffic Division is asking anyone with information about the red sedan or the motorcycle to call 615-862-7738. The truck driver’s cooperation is not in question, investigators say; the open question is who else was on that road and why they left.

For a city where pedestrian deaths on major pikes have become a recurring concern, the details of this one stand out: not a single impact, but three, spread across the minutes it took for help to be summoned, on a road with no crosswalk and no signal to protect someone on foot.

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