Damion Martin lost his mother to a hit-and-run driver the week before Thanksgiving in 2024. More than a year later, the case remains suspended and the crime unsolved.

The crime

It had only been dark for about an hour-and-a-half. It was cold and spitting snow that night.

Tanja Safforld cut across a gas station lot, taking a shortcut to the store. She never made it across the busy South Side street.

At 5:56 p.m. on Nov. 20, a driver hit her and then fled the scene.

Almost immediately, 911 calls started coming in: "Somebody got hit by a car," "On Marquette and Western, they ran over somebody," "I saw this car pass by and then it ran away, it didn't stop."

Callers described the car, the driver, and where the car went after it hit Safforld. "It turned going down east on Marquette."

"She was a real nice lady, loving, very supportive, wanted the best for everybody," said one of her seven children, Damion Martin.

"Nobody can imagine your mother going to the store, getting things for Thanksgiving, and then just don't even return for the holidays. That's real hard," he said.

Body camera video CBS News Chicago received via a public records request revealed police officers arrived on the scene several minutes after the 911 calls. Chicago Fire was already there.

Police asked fire: "She's going to live, though, right?" Fire responded: "As of now."

The case

An ambulance took Safforld to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead around midnight.

"This is the hardest thing of my life," said Martin, who is still coping with the pain of losing his mother and not having answers as to who's responsible.

Police on the scene the night of Safforld's death said one of the cameras nearby wasn't facing the right direction. The police report indicates that no witness statement was taken, and no detectives would be arriving on the scene.

A Major Accident Investigation Unit (MAIU) officer was assigned to the case the next day.

It took another day for the investigator to go back to the 6700 block of Western and take photos. In all, he took 27 photos and looked for video from several businesses in the area, including the gas station and the dollar store.

By the afternoon on November 22, Chicago Police issued a Community Alert with a photo of a dark-colored sedan, which police indicated may have been the car that hit Safforld.

Tips about that car came in, and police ultimately ruled that car out.

Martin believes the first alert should never have gone out because 911 callers on the night of the hit-and-run described the car as a gray sedan, possibly a Hyundai.

In all, case files received via public records request reveal the MAIU Investigator spent 39 hours on the case in November, another 49 hours in December. In total, 130 hours by February 2025. But on March 2, 2025, the case was suspended.

Other records show Safforld's incident was one of 276,000 hit-and-run incidents on Chicago streets between January 2017 and July 2025. Three thousand and two hundred of them ended with serious injuries or loss of life. Fewer than 25% of those serious cases had been solved.

The cameras

With the police investigation seemingly going nowhere, Martin went back to 67th and Western.

"I actually walked around this whole neighborhood," he said.

He was looking for cameras and clues, and posting his search on social media.                                                                                    

Supplemental police reports note a license plate reader was "offline" the night his mother was killed. The POD camera video that was reviewed had several glitches — often covering up traffic for long periods of time, in essence, making the video useless in identifying a vehicle.

"How was there no cameras active? And, and I see cameras everywhere. So I just went on TikTok for just the first time, and I had like 400 followers on TikTok. I started pointing out everything, video just went viral," said Martin.

And, piqued the interest of people with important information.

"The witness found me through TikTok."

The witness, who did not want to be identified, connected with Martin and told him she saw the accident happen, "I looked through my mirror, and I said to myself, 'Somebody is gonna hit her.' And as soon as I said it, I screamed because I see how the car hit her."

Her story was different than the police description on the November 22 Community Alert. "When I call the cops … they were saying that it was a black car, but I know it wasn't. It was a gray car, four-door gray car."

Martin's social post piqued the interest of someone else with a new clue.

"A psychic wrote me out of nowhere and say, 'Go check a blue and yellow sign," he said.

Martin went back to the scene and found it. A car dealership with a blue and yellow sign. He was able to look at the business' surveillance video with the witness. She pointed out the gray car she saw hit his mother.

It was now nearly a month after his mother's death.

Martin provided the new information to the MAIU investigator, and within a couple of days, on Dec. 20, police issued a new Community alert with the photo of the gray car.

The car dealership is featured prominently in the investigator's photos taken on November 22. But, case file records show he never checked for video from the dealership until after the psychic's clue and the witness confirmation that Martin recorded.

"We would have been getting justice because maybe, maybe the guy that did it would have turned himself in. Now, by putting misleading information out there, now he probably thinking like, 'Oh, they don't know it was me. I can get rid of this car now," said Martin.

Hit and run cases

Why are hit-and-run cases so difficult to solve, and if solved, difficult to prosecute?

Professor Bennett Gershman of Pace Law School said, "I keep coming back to how difficult it is to get enough evidence to prosecute effectively, and to convince a jury, especially where there may be the excuses … I didn't realize what I did, it was dark, I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything."

CPD declined to comment on the community alert issues and said the case remains open, but suspended.

Police also declined to make anyone from MAIU available to talk about the challenges they face and whether they need more resources.

A spokesperson said they're committed to getting justice for families.

Despite the car photo mix-up last year and the lack of movement on the case this year, Safforld's family still has hope that justice may come for their mother.

"We just wanna let everyone know that we're not giving up. We still have hope, and we're not going anywhere. We're gonna continue investigating until someone speaks up because someone heard something and they saw something," said Truly Holliday, Safforld's daughter.

Meanwhile, Martin maintains a memorial near the crash scene, and to mark one year since his mother's death, he and other family members released balloons in her honor. He says what he misses most about her is "the support, the hugs, the kisses."