Green Activist Walking Across US Hit and Killed by SUV

A 33-year-old environmental activist who was hoping to walk across the country barefoot was struck and killed along a Florida highway over the weekend, reports ABC News. Police say Mark Baumer of Providence, RI, was hit by an SUV Saturday afternoon on the side of US Highway 90 in Walton County, reports WTVY. Troopers say alcohol wasn't a factor, but charges were pending against the driver after the accident. Baumer, who had set off from Rhode Island in October and planned to eventually turn west to California, had been keeping an online diary of his journey at Barefoot Across America. His last post, "my one hundredth day on the road," went up the day he was killed.

"Mark was an amazingly compassionate, empathic, humble, joyful, generous, mindful and caring person," says a post at FANG collective, a nonprofit for whom Baumer was raising money. "He was a talented poet and artist with an ability to tap into the human experience with his work." As of Monday, Baumer's journey had raised about $14,000. "Every day corporations continue to profit from earth's destruction" Baumer wrote in a mission statement for the campaign. "I decided cross America barefoot to see if I could save earth." Baumer, described as a prolific writer by WCSH in Maine, had been enrolled in Brown University's MFA program. (A study found that men think going green will make them wimps.)