Results tagged “accident”

During evening rush hour yesterday, SPD Blotter reports, the driver of a Lexus was traveling southbound on 5th Avenue nearing the intersection with Olive Way, when a male bicyclist--suspected of running the red light--also entered the intersection and collided with the car. Medics responded, taking the bicyclist to Harborview with life-threatening head injuries. A police investigation is ongoing.

Early Sunday evening, KING5-TV reports, two women had taken four dogs out for a walk near the train tracks (not to be confused with light rail track) just outside of Seattle, when one dog ran off and onto the train tracks just as a Chicago-bound Amtrak train was approaching. Moments later, the eastbound train struck and killed the dog and injured one of the women who raced after it. The injured woman was brought onboard the train and taken to the Edmonds Station, where paramedics whisked her away to Harborview.

Link Light Rail hasn't been open a full two weeks, and sadly we're already passing along news of the first light rail fatality--though it may have been a suicide. The accident took place late last night in the SoDo area, as the rail car was heading southbound, past South Holgate Street and 5th Avenue South. The SPD Blotter reports a man jumped over a barricade and into the path of the train, where he was struck and killed. With no crosswalks in the vicinity, police are still investigating the accident and what the man was doing in a non-pedestrian area. No light rail passengers were witness to the accident, and they were later bused away.

All apologies to anyone involved in this accident on the floating bridge, but the headline "Loose bucket blamed for multi-car crash on I-90" only makes us think of this:

Last night at about 10:20 p.m., a bicyclist was struck and killed by a car taking the Dexter Way North exit from Aurora, says Queen Anne News. The police arrested the car's driver after "an evaluation showed signs of impairment."

Released via the Seattle Police Department Twitter feed, officers shot a man yesterday at Greenwood Ave. N and Holman Road, who is suspected in yesterday's Shoreline bank robbery and a string of other bank robberies. Prior to shots being fired, officers had spotted the bank robbery suspect stopped in traffic at Holman and 3rd Ave. with a stolen pick-up truck. A team of police cars quickly began to box in the truck. Trying to flee, the suspect rammed the stolen pick-up into a police car and a car carrying a father with his kids at the corner of Greenwood Ave. N and Holman Road. Police fired four shots, stalling the suspect who sustained injuries to his arm. The family of three was uninjured.

Last night a motorcycle carrying two people (apparently driving a bit too fast) were screaming down Greenwood Avenue around 8:48 p.m., when they collided smack-dab into a car turning left onto 102nd Street. The cause of the crash has not been confirmed, but it did result in both riders being thrown a great distance from the bike, causing serious life-threatening injuries. It's a sad but strong reminder that summertime begs us to be extra careful, especially when more bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles are back on the road.

You know, when the PT Cruiser first came out we were excited to see this brawny, modern hot rod that looked back to the great Plymouth roadsters like...uh...well, looked back period. But then we saw one up close and realized it was a station wagon for bonehead baby boomers. Yech two times. That's why we smiled when we heard one got creamed yesterday by a light rail train on MLK Way.

• Belltown People wonders exactly how much the artsy Free Sheep Foundation was involved with Capitol Hill's recent Gamblergate sting operation. What's the vig, capisce?
• Meanwhile, over at MyBallard, the news is that kids are skipping out of Salmon Bay School with the swine flu hot on their heels. We wish could get another animal in this item.

KIRO TV has a slideshow of the light rail collision, shot from their copter. The accident happened at MLK and South Dawson, and their photos show the car's occupant being wheeled off in a stretcher. This is why we can't have nice things. The damn thing's not even officially running yet and it's already all scratched up.

Two vehicles, an SUV and a van, collided head-on on the Fremont Bridge this morning, blocking all lanes of traffic. KIRO 7 has their chopper in the air, and reports no word on when the bridge will reopen.

A 39-year-old bicyclist collided with a van this morning on 24th Avenue near 65th, and died at Harborview later. MyBallard has the sad aftermath on the horrific accident, which came during the morning commute and left the cyclist pinned underneath the van. Let's be careful out there, people.

      

Still a little shaken by the charter bus collision yesterday that almost sent one (if not both) buses full of Job Corps kids plummeting 30 feet onto I-5, we walked back down to the scene, East Thomas Street and Melrose, this morning. The buses had been towed away last night. The west end of East Thomas was vigorously sanded to give the trucks traction, and a temporary guardrail installed. Thank god for the days of plentiful rebar.

            

Today, two charter buses slid down icy, cobblestone East Thomas Street on Capitol Hill, across Melrose, and crashed through the guardrail, almost plummeting onto I-5. One bus made it several feet past the guardrail before coming to a stop. Buses frequently use East Thomas Street--they exit I-5 at Olive but can't make the left turn down Denny, so they go two blocks up, turn left at East Thomas and then right on Denny to get to the Greyhound station. This time it appears two of them attempted East Thomas at the same time, and the results were heart-stopping. At this point we're not hearing of any major injuries. Updates to come.

We heard from CHS that a truck had hit a power line at 12th Avenue and East Aloha, so we just ran up to check. It's a semi that has broken off a huge tree branch, which in turn snagged a power line. So now the semi, branch, and downed line are waiting for a Seattle City Light crew to arrive and untangle them. In the meantime, East Aloha is closed to traffic between 12th and 13th. We suspect it'll be closed at least an hour or two, given the ticklishness of the situation.

It's always hard to come back to work after a holiday weekend; furthermore, even though it's Wednesday, last week Wednesday was Friday (so to speak). Today it's merely a run-of-the-mill Wednesday, which could be considered depressing. Maybe that's why this guy jumped into traffic on I-5 by NE 50th St. this morning. He wasn't hit, but other than that no one seems to know exactly how he's doing or what possibly made him think that was a healthy and life-affirming hump-day activity.

The 76 gas station at the north end of Broadway is under a heavy lockdown at the moment--all the roads around, including Broadway, are blocked off. We heard from a guy directing traffic in a reflective orange vest--and therefore a quotable source--that someone ran over a pump. One of the FedEx Kinkos employees taking an enforced sunbreak on the curb told us that something had actually caught fire over there. ("Fire in building," says the Seattle 911 log.) There were a number of ambulances with people gathered around, but we're not sure if anyone was seriously hurt.

A Spokane man has been arrested for assault by watercraft, after he drunkenly ran over his wife with a boat during the holiday weekend. The woman's arm was severed below the elbow during the accident and rescuers were not able to recover her forearm because it sank. The woman was taken to a Spokane hospital and is expected to survive.

Damn, this is the kind of story that really makes our stomach churn. This morning, a skater was hit by a bus killed when he fell under a bus wheel in the U-District. The 20-year-old skater, according to the Times, "ran into the side of the bus and fell under the rear wheel...He was pronounced dead at the scene." Apparently the bus driver didn't even realize she'd run over the kid until the cops stopped her a block later.

Writing news for Seattlest, we spend a lot of time feeling slightly befuddled by local news headlines. Last night's perusal of headlines offered us this gem: "Semi road rage leads to big mess on I-5." We read it as a case of mild road rage, somehow causing a traffic jam. A sentence into the story, we realized our error. In reality, the driver of a semi truck suffered a case of road rage when another truck driver tailed his truck too closely. The angry driver slammed on the brakes, damaging his trailer and sending him careening onto the highway's dirt shoulder.

A charter bus carrying the Garfield High School softball team crashed into a low pedestrian overpass in the Arboretum last night, shearing the roof off the bus. Five students who were passengers were taken to Harborview Medical Center after complaining of back and neck pain. Though none of the injuries appeared to be serious, the girls were taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Normally we don't like to report on the kind of news that brings a sad sigh to your lips and might make you think of calling your mother. But since Seattlest Abbey covered the story of the 10-year old boy who asked friends to bury his head in the sand, and we're filling in on the news beat while she's in Austin, we thought we should at mark the end of the story now that the poor kid has died.

A 10-year-old boy from Everett is in critical condition at Children's Hospital after being buried head-first in a sandbox this weekend. Cody Porter was playing in the backyard of a family friends home with his brothers and a few other children when the accident occurred Saturday afternoon.

Seattlest spotted this taxi, that had made its way into a store window on Denny Avenue, when leaving the VERA Project last night. We're not sure what store the cab exactly crashed into, but we certainly don't envy the business owner or the cab driver. Oops!