About 1,500 homes and businesses in the University Area are without power Sunday morning after a fatal overnight traffic accident.

Police say 25-year-old Vernard Lee Whitfield III was killed when his 2007 Mazda ran off the road at a high rate of speed hitting a utility pole and a building at about 2:30 a.m..

A passenger in the Mazda - whose name has not been released - was taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries.

Some traffic signals along University City Boulevard (NC 49) were out near I-485 as a result of the accident as well.