Police located the vehicle, which struck and killed 34-year-old Atriece Hall within a week of her death, yet a year has passed and they have yet to make an arrest.
The Mylar balloons have faded, but the images of what happened to Hall along North Point Boulevard in Dundalk remain as vivid today as they did a year ago.
"It wasn't like a hit and knocked her somewhere. They ran her over. She was all mangled up," said Melvin Hubbard who walked up on the scene shortly after Hall was struck. "I had two nightmares after that last night. It was really an awful sight."
Hall had visited friends and was attempting to cross the road to catch a bus back to Essex when a vehicle mowed her down and just kept going.
When Baltimore County Police announced within a week that they had tracked down the International truck with damage to the front end that had taken her life, Hall's family felt an arrest was imminent.
A year later, they're still waiting.
"It's an everyday struggle not knowing who and what, where, why... who did it,” said Alexis Hall, the victim’s sister. “Nothing is being done. No one has come forward with any information. I know people know more than they're saying they know, but it's like nobody even cares."
"I feel that they just gave up on her... like just another black person dead on the street," said Tammy Oxendine, one of the victim’s friends.
The family says police have told them that the truck's owner has stonewalled the investigation refusing to identify who may have been behind the wheel at the time of the crash.
"They found the owner. The owner turns his back on it. Blames it on someone else, but at the end of the day, if that's his company, he should be reliable for it," said Oxendine. "It's somebody local, and it's someone we grew up with. We know a name. We know exactly where it's at. We know a lot of things that he thinks we don't know."
ABC2 News asked Elise Armacost of the Baltimore County Police Department what's taking so long.
"These hit-and-run cases can be very challenging cases to pursue, and this has been one such case,” said Armacost. “We do have a person of interest and we do have a vehicle of interest, but unfortunately we do not have enough evidence at this point to bring a charge."
So now the same family, which buried a daughter, a sister and a partner in life will have to continue to wait for someone to answer for abandoning her in the moments leading up to her death---marking each birthday, each anniversary and each day with the knowledge that justice has eluded them.
"My life hasn't been the same,” said Hall. “Holidays… it was terrible. I didn't even celebrate holidays for real, but it's been a burden on us and then to know that someone is still out here and haven't turned themselves in and haven't said anything about the situation. How could you sleep at night and just care less?"
"Give us closure. Let the girl rest, because she's not resting. She's still here,” said Oxendine. “That's why we come here and give her some kind of closure to let her know we're still here. It hurts. It hurts knowing that someone just ran her over and just left her."
Police say they are still at work trying to build a solid case, and if they prematurely arrest someone, they risk allowing them to get off, which means the family would never get justice.
