Hawaii Pacific University student Mariah Danforth-Moore was killed by a hit-and-run driver Sunday night at the crosswalk where state crews last month activated a flashing beacon light aimed at increasing safety for HPU students at a spot known to be hazardous.

Danforth-Moore, a sophomore from Oneida, Wis., was walking across Kamehameha Highway to her dormitory at HPU’s Hawaii Loa campus when a car struck her at 8:45 p.m. Sunday.

Police continued to look for the driver Monday.

The crosswalk has been a concern for years for HPU, say the Kaneohe Neighborhood Board and state officials, and four other people have been hit there since 2005, state Department of Transportation spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said. None of the pedestrians before Danforth-Moore was killed, he said.

The department installed a $22,800 rectangular rapid flashing beacon system to run across Kamehameha Highway between the campus and the Pali Golf Course and turned it on Oct. 21, Meisenzahl said Monday.

"It was meant for pedestrian safety," Meisenzahl said. "This is the absolute last thing we wanted to have happen."

A typical traffic signal is not appropriate for the crosswalk because it is close to the heavily traveled Castle Junction intersection at Pali and Kamehameha highways, and because the area in front of HPU did not meet the minimum requirement of five pedestrian "incidents" in a 12-month period, Meisenzahl said.

So state crews installed the beacon system, which allows pedestrians to push a button that activates yellow flashing lights on top of poles to alert drivers of a pedestrian in the crosswalk.

Danforth-Moore, a Native American psychology student, apparently had ridden TheBus to Kaneohe from her job as a sales associate at the Victoria’s Secret Pink store in Ala Moana Center, said John Kearns, HPU spokesman and vice president of academic affairs.

After getting off the bus at Castle Junction and taking the pedestrian walkway in the Kamehameha Highway median, Danforth-Moore was in the crosswalk and had nearly reached the campus side of the highway on her way back to the 230-student residence halls when she was struck by a white sports car heading Kaneohe-bound around 8:45 p.m., police said.

The driver did not stop.

She was taken in critical condition to Castle Medical Center, where she died.

The car likely has "severe" front-end damage, and police were asking the public’s help in tracking it down.

The road was wet at the time, and police said they did not know whether speeding or alcohol were factors.

HPU biology junior Andrew Puckett, 20, said the new beacon system was inadequate to save Danforth-Moore, his friend and former dorm mate.

On Monday Puckett held up a handmade sign along Kamehameha Highway that pleaded with drivers to "Stop for Students."

"This is right where she was killed," Puckett said while holding his poster board sign. "These stupid flashing light things? Drivers don’t take them seriously. It’s wrong that this happened. The state hasn’t taken this seriously. All they’ve done is put in these blinkers."

Danforth-Moore was listed as 19 years old by the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office, but friends in Wisconsin said she turned 20 in July.

Her father is a member of the U.S. military and is stationed in Hawaii, Kearns said.

She had a seemingly ever-present smile and had fallen in love with the islands, said family friend Cheryl Manders.

Manders’ son, Nathan, attends college in Wisconsin and had been dating Danforth-Moore since they both attended 800-student West De Pere High School seven miles south of Green Bay.

They had been planning to reunite in Los Angeles for this year’s Rose Bowl.

"They were on the bowling team together, and they just really liked the same things," Manders said by telephone. "She was a wonderful person, always smiling, and she just had a wonderful personality. They say God always takes the best, and she was one of them, that’s for sure. It’s just so unbelievable and very hard to comprehend that this has happened to her."

At West De Pere, Danforth-Moore, who graduated in 2010 with a 3.7 grade-point average, "was a fantastic French student," helped lead the award-winning marching band, directed school plays and belonged to the National Honor Society, said her high school counselor, Lisa Boyd.

While in high school, Danforth-Moore wanted to take a college-level psychology course at a nearby private university, but the classes were full, Boyd said. So she signed up to study college-level Japanese.

"She was always very willing to try new things," Boyd said by phone.

So it was no surprise that Danforth-Moore chose to move to Hawaii, a place she had never been to.

Manders thought that Danforth-Moore would get homesick, "but she loved it there."

The crosswalk where Danforth-Moore was hit has been a concern for the Kaneohe Neighborhood Board for years, Chairman Roy Yanagihara said Monday.

"There have been some close calls but never a fatality as far as I know," Yanagihara said.

State Sen. Jill Tokuda (D, Kaneohe-Kailua) called that section of Kamehameha Highway "a dangerous area for pedestrians," adding, "Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of traffic there. But now you have a lot more traffic and a lot more students coming out of there to use TheBus. You’ve had a lot of near misses and a lot of accidents."

HPU premed senior Maddi Ruhl, 21, was busy Monday organizing a sign-waving demonstration for 10 a.m. Nov. 29 at the crosswalk where Danforth-Moore was hit.

At about 10:25 p.m. on Feb. 24, 2009, Ruhl said she was blown out of her jacket, backpack and Converse sneakers when she was hit in the same crosswalk by a Kaneohe-bound hit-and-run driver.

The driver was never caught.

"I was looking both ways, and the driver just came out of nowhere," Ruhl said. "They hit me and I went flying. My shoes came off. My bag come off and I was bleeding from everywhere."

She suffered no life-threatening injuries.

Ruhl said she hates using the beacon system because so many drivers ignore the flashing yellow lights, she said.

"You’ve got a city bus stop and you’ve got a university, and in between are six lanes of highway," Ruhl said. "You’re forcing university students to walk across six lanes of highway, and you’re not giving them a very safe option."

Ruhl believes installing a normal traffic light at the crosswalk would only jam up traffic along Kamehameha Highway, especially around Castle Junction.

So she hopes to generate enough concern to have a pedestrian overpass installed that will keep HPU students safer.

"It’s unrealistic to put a light in," she said, "but we need to get some eyes on this subject."