Salt Lake City police didn’t link pedestrian attacks right away because hit-and-runs are so common. Here’s how they did.

Nisha Shrestha and Pratista Ghimire were walking to Salt Lake City’s North Temple FrontRunner station just before 5 a.m. last month, bound for the train that would take the roommates to Ogden and their Monday morning classes at Weber State University.

Before they began to cross 600 West, they waited for the crosswalk signal, Ghimire told police. Once they got the go-ahead, Ghimire stepped out first, continuing to walk until she heard the impact behind her, according to charging documents.

She turned in time to see a white sedan speeding away and her friend, Shrestha, critically injured on the ground. Witnesses told police the driver sped through a red light before he hit Shrestha.

The crash fractured Shrestha’s skull, pelvis and several bones in her left leg, charging documents state. Medical staff at the hospital where she was taken put her on a ventilator after the March 11 wreck. She has since recovered enough to breathe on her own, but as of last week, remained in the hospital.

Prosecutors say Shrestha was at least the sixth victim of 26-year-old Anh Pham, who they argue targeted female pedestrians in at least four random hit-and-runs over the last seven months — a conclusion investigators did not immediately come to, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said, because hit-and-runs are so common and almost always accidental.

Of all the victims identified by police, Shrestha was the most severely injured, and evidence left behind at her crash site appears to have opened up the case for investigators, forcing them to discard their initial assumptions and suspect the attacks were not isolated incidents, Gill said.

“You don’t think that somebody is intentionally going out and hitting people, because accidents happen, right?,” Gill said in an interview. “So, it’s sort of like a Copernican shift to say, ‘We know what the default is. Let’s step back and not go by the default, and look at it in a different way.’”

Salt Lake City police spokesperson Brent Weisberg struggled with Gill’s description of investigators’ thought processes, saying officers take these types of crashes — where a driver hits a pedestrian and flees — seriously. He contended detectives had been investigating the first crash as an aggravated assault.

“As we’ve looked back on [the investigation], we’ve certainly seen the officers from the start recognize the seriousness of this case. So too did our detectives,” Weisberg said. “There was just so little information that we had at the time. Even though we had the license plate, we still needed to build that case, to a point where we could take it to the district attorney’s office.”

Weisberg said officers were on the lookout for Pham’s car ever since the first August 2023 crash, but didn’t find it, despite Pham being arrested once in the county between the first crash and the spate of crashes that followed in February and March.

Pham was apparently homeless and living out of the vehicle, which was registered to his mother, making it difficult to locate, Weisberg said. Police also suspended their investigation into the August crash in October, one month before Pham’s November arrest in an unrelated case, a police spokesperson told The Salt Lake Tribune in an email.

A bumper provides a clue

The key piece of evidence found where Shrestha was struck was a part of the sedan’s front bumper, wrenched from the vehicle upon impact and left lying alongside Shrestha’s Crocs, police documents said.

It clued investigators into what sort of car to search for in traffic surveillance footage, leading them to Pham’s Toyota Avalon.

Two days later, on March 13, Salt Lake City police found Pham and his heavily damaged car at Liberty Park, where they arrested him. He told investigators he may have loaned his car to a friend and was in West Jordan on March 11, but later told them, “Yeah, [the car]’s only mine. I don’t let anyone drive,” charging documents state.

From there, Weisberg said police “did a deep dive” into past cases, reviewing footage and witness statements and tracing the car’s license plate. Investigators then found consistencies in several cases, where witnesses reported they believed the crash was intentional and described a similar vehicle.

“When they recognized what was happening,” Weisberg said, “they coordinated quickly.”

Pham was ultimately charged last month with six counts of attempted murder, a first-degree felony. He also is facing four counts of failure to stop at a crash with serious injury, a third-degree felony; and two class A misdemeanor counts of failure to stop at an injury crash.

He appeared in court for the first time on March 27 from jail, wearing a yellow jumpsuit as he held his shackled hands in his lap and said little more than, “Good morning,” to the judge before answering, “Yes, sir,” when told about an upcoming court appearance.

His attorney, Elise Lockwood, told The Tribune on March 29, “I have no comment on the case at this time or at any other time.”

Weisberg conceded that hit-and-runs can be difficult to solve, and that investigators often rely on both public and private video footage to track down leads.

Utah Highway Safety Office data does indicate that motorists crashing into pedestrians has become increasingly common over the last 10 years, growing from 676 such wrecks in 2013 to 919 last year. Still, the United States Department of Transportation says these crashes are often underreported, especially when they cause less severe injuries.

Pedestrians are also particularly vulnerable these days, as SUVs and pickups get larger and more powerful and drivers grow more distracted, in short reach of cellphones while traveling on roadways often built for ease of traffic flow — not pedestrian safety, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

When hit-and-run drivers are caught, it’s also often difficult for prosecutors to get a conviction, since they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a driver meant to hit someone or was criminally negligent, said Paul Cassell, a University of Utah College of Law professor and former federal judge.

That’s a high burden of proof without witnesses and other evidence, he said. Sometimes, the person struck may not be able to recall what happened. And it’s especially difficult, Cassell added, if the case centers on one crash.

“But what happening here is now you’ve got four different maybe — potentially seven different accidents — that all come together,” Cassell said, citing three other crashes that prosecutors have said remain under investigation. “You can try those four to seven accidents all in one trial to prove that it was not an accident, but it was intentional.”

4 crashes

Before Pham was identified as a suspect, two of the women he is accused of striking seemed to already notice a potential pattern.

The women, Martha Knudson and Janette Brummett, had just finished a pilates class and were walking together on the east side of Douglas Avenue, near the intersection with Laird Avenue, when they were hit on Feb. 28. Knudson told investigators she heard a car accelerate just before impact.

In an interview with KSL-TV after the crash, the pair noted the wreck seemed eerily similar to one four days earlier in Sandy, where a driver hit Jocelyn Peirce and her 16-year-old daughter while they were walking near 1700 East 11490 South. Both mother and daughter were left with serious injuries, according to charging documents.

“I hope there’s not someone out there that’s intentionally targeting people to do this, but the way that it went down sounded so similar to how it went down for us,” said Knudson, who was left concussed with cuts and fractured front teeth. Charging documents state Brummett, was also concussed in the crash, was left with a brain bleed and broken hand.

At the time, police told the TV station that they thought the hit-and-run was an isolated event.

Prosecutors now argue it wasn’t, linking Pham to those two cases, as well as the first hit-and-run crash on Aug. 22, 2023, and the March 11 case involving Shrestha.

Gill said he has asked local police departments to review cases where drivers hit pedestrians over the last year to see if any other cases may fit the pattern.

“This was a threat that was shrouded in the prevalence of these kinds of things, and the anonymity of hit-and-runs, and accidents that you don’t connect,” he said.

Charging documents indicate that investigators have eyed at least three additional crashes — two in Salt Lake County and one in Summit County — they think could be connected.

Both Gill and the Salt Lake City Police Department declined to release additional details about the Salt Lake County crashes and why investigators believe they may be linked. Police added that Pham’s case remains open, with detectives receiving new information “weekly.”

In Summit County, Sgt. Felicia Sotelo said Pham is being considered as a suspect in a hit-and-run crash there on March 5. In that case, a car struck a woman from behind at about 4:45 p.m. on Sun Peak Drive, between Kimball Junction and Park City, then drove away.

When reached for comment after Pham was charged, Knudson told The Tribune the situation has been “a lot” for her.

“I am glad the police have identified a viable suspect and trust that the Salt Lake County D.A. will pursue the charges to the full extent possible,” she said. “My thoughts are with the other victims for speedy and full recoveries.”

Brummett did not respond to The Tribune’s request for comment. Samantha Mathews, injured in the August 2023 crash, also did not respond. The Tribune attempted to contact Peirce at an email address listed in public records, but she did not reply.

After Shrestha was struck, Weber State officials worked to get her mother a plane ticket to Utah so she could be with her daughter, who began studying microbiology at the university last year. She arrived in town on March 31, said Bryan Magaña, Weber State University’s spokesperson

“We’re both horrified and heartbroken for what Nisha is going through. At the same time,” Magaña said, “she’s offered us reasons to be hopeful as we watch her persevere to recovery.”

Various Nepalese groups, including the Non-Resident Nepali Association, Dhading Nepali Society America Inc. and Nepalese Association of Utah, have set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover medical expenses for Shrestha, who is Nepalese.

“At this critical juncture, Nisha Shrestha needs our collective support more than ever,” the page reads. “Let’s come together as a community to alleviate the immense burden she faces during this challenging time.”

Pham’s next court date is scheduled for May 9, according to court records. He remains in jail without the option to post bail.