Local News

A motorcyclist was severely injured at 10:15 p.m. Saturday when he collided head-on with a Toyota making a left turn on Northeast  50^th Street.

The motorcycle was traveling west when it collided with the car at the University Way Northeast intersection. The rider slid under the car, sustaining life-threatening injuries, according to Seattle police.

The rider was taken to Harborview Medical Center.

A drug-recognition officer evaluated the driver of the Toyota and found no signs of impairment, police said. Police are continuing to investigate the accident.

Seattle police say a man suffered critical injuries Sunday afternoon after crashing the Jeep he was driving into the rear of a parked semi truck.

The man was driving southbound in the 11100 block of Aurora Avenue North at about 4:50 p.m. when he rear-ended the semi truck, which was legally parked and unoccupied, Seattle police said. The man was transported to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries.

All southbound lanes of Aurora Avenue were blocked as police investigated the accident scene.

Traffic was being detoured around the area, and police said they expect the closure to last until 8 p.m.

Motorists headed across the Interstate 90 bridge from the Eastside into Seattle are running into heavy traffic this evening as drivers turn to the only bridge open across Lake Washington.

Traffic headed northbound on I-5 from Boeing Field through downtown Seattle also is heavy, as the region copes with a weekend construction-related closures, including northbound I-405 through downtown Bellevue.

It could be worse — and may in fact get worse — state Department of Transportation Spokesman Bart Treece said. “We’ve got a lot of weekend to go and there’s a nighttime Mariners game,” he said.

Treece suggested fans driving to the 7:10 p.m. Mariners-Red Sox matchup hit the road early and perhaps enjoy a dinner in Pioneer Square.

A northbound backup on I-405 due to construction isn’t terribly long, because people are finding a variety of detours, including Bellevue Way Southeast, 116th Avenue Southeast and West Lake Sammamish Parkway, Treece said.

DOT advises travelers to consider carpooling, taking a bus or just putting off trips that can be done another time. But for folks driving south on I-405 despite those suggestions, traffic is flowing quite nicely.

Seattle police  help direct traffic at the intersection of  Greenwood Avenue North and North 130th Street where a young girl was hit by a car in a crosswalk  Friday morning.  (Photo by John Lok / The Seattle Times)

Seattle police say a 7-year-old girl is recovering at a Seattle hospital after she was struck by a car this morning while walking to school, an accident witnessed by fellow students.

The girl was walking with her mother and sister to Broadview-Thomson K-8 School and was in a crosswalk around 9 a.m. when she was struck by a car at Greenwood Avenue North and North 130th Street, police said.

The girl was carried about 30 feet on the hood of the car and thrown another 15 feet, according to Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore. Police said the girl’s mother also was hit, but was not injured.

Moore said the girl was bruised and bleeding, but her injuries didn’t appear to be serious. She was taken to Harborview Medical Center.

The driver, described by police as an elderly man, continued driving south on Greenwood Avenue North, police said. Officers located the car in a nearby parking lot.

The driver was evaluated by Seattle Fire Department medics and transported to a hospital for treatment. He was also evaluated by a drug-recognition officer for possible signs of drug or alcohol impairment, according to police.  The results of those tests are pending.

Just before the accident, witnesses reported the same man had been seen driving recklessly south on Greenwood, police said.

Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel said a number of students saw the incident. A letter about it was sent home with all students at the end of the day.

UPDATE AT 12:16 P.M.: All lanes of southbound I-5 have been reopened.

ORIGINAL POST: A 24-year-old Bellingham woman was killed this morning when her motorcycle struck the back of an SUV on southbound Interstate 5 in North Snohomish County.

According to the State Patrol, traffic was slowing just before 10 a.m. following a single-car spinout near the Stillaguamish River, when the woman’s Honda struck the back of a braking SUV. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Southbound lanes have been closed during the State Patrol investigation.

The crash of a FedEx truck on southbound I-5 near the Convention Center backed up traffic on the freeway for miles and miles. (Photo by Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times)

UPDATE: 1:20 p.m. | All lanes of southbound Interstate 5 are open. The last lane through the crash scene reopened about 12:15 p.m., WSDOT spokesman Mike Allende said.

UPDATE 11 A.M. |  Just a single lane of southbound Interstate 5 remains closed through the crash scene; WSDOT said the backup approaching the area is down to a mile. It’s hoped the final lane will be reopened about 2 p.m. WSDOT spokesman Mike Allende said the overall length of the closure has been due to several factors, including:

• The State Patrol investigation of the crash itself.
• The need to deal with both a fire and fuel spill at the scene.
• The need to examine damaged highway barriers.
• Getting heavy-duty tow equipment to the scene to remove the badly damaged truck cab and the two trailers.

UPDATE 10:45 a.m.|  If you have packages in the FedEx pipeline, you needn’t worry about them being damaged in this morning’s wreck.  WSP Trooper Julie Judson said both FedEx trailers were empty.   Judson said early indications are that the rig jackknifed when the driver hit his brakes when getting back on wet pavement after coming out from underneath the Convention Center.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m.| WSDOT reports a new accident on the Interstate 5 express lanes near Mercer has closed three southbound lanes for a brief time, backing up traffic for three miles, but all lanes were reopened by 10:15 a.m.

UPDATE 9 A.M.|  Two southbound lanes have been reopened through the Interstate 5 crash scene in downtown Seattle. One HOV lane and one regular lane are now open.

UPDATE 8  a.m. | All regular southbound lanes of Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle were closed this morning – and it may be 11 a.m. or later before all lanes reopen — after a tractor trailer jackknifed and burned south of the Convention Center.

Original post:

At 8:30 a.m. Transportation Department officials said they hoped to reopen one lane of the four lanes through the crash scene soon. But it would take several more hours before all southbound lanes reopen, said WSDOT spokesman Mike Allende.

The accident, in which no one was seriously hurt, occurred about 4:40 a.m. and by 7 a.m., southbound traffic was backed up as far as Lake City Way, with the backup growing rapidly during the morning commute.

The closure was caused when a double-trailer FedEx truck jackknifed on wet pavement, hit an abutment and caught fire with one section tipping partway over, the Washington State Patrol reported.  Heavy tow trucks were being brought in to move it.

The driver was shaken but not seriously hurt, according to the Associated Press.

Southbound traffic was being rerouted off the freeway at James Street, and reconnecting to the freeway on collector-distributor lanes south of the crash scene.

Allende said even after the truck is removed, full traffic through the area won’t resume right away because several sections of barrier have been damaged and fuel spilled onto the highway has to be cleaned up.

The I-5 express lanes were taking much of the spillover from the main freeway, but two accidents on the express lanes near downtown before 7 a.m. also slowed traffic there, starting in the University District.

Southbound Highway 99 was also rapidly becoming congested.  And other surface streets were crowded as motorists sought a way around the backup.  Even on southbound bus routes that don’t take the freeway, the time of the morning commute doubled for some riders.

“Basically, all of the alternate routes are jammed at this point,” Allende said. “We’re telling people to delay your trip if possible.”

The I-5 southbound lanes through downtown Seattle normally carry about 110,000 vehicles a day — 7,000 of that during the morning commute, Allende said.

The section of the highway where the accident occurred has been called by some the state’s worst bottleneck.

A multiple vehicle crash in the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 at Southcenter this morning has slowed traffic traveling toward Seattle.

Washington State Patrol Sgt. Dan Atchison said that a dump truck, a semi and several cars were involved in the crash which is at the Interstate 405 interchange. He said the dump truck is in the roadway and the trailer of the semi jackknifed. Surprisingly, he said, there were no major injuries. It’s unclear what caused the accident.

The multiple vehicle crash blocked the right two lanes are blocked, leaving two lanes and the carpool lane open for commuters.

“It sounds like it is a pretty big mess. Everything is backed up,” Atchison said.

Bart Treece, a Department of Transportation (WSDOT) spokesman, said that motorists should expect the commute from Federal Way to Seattle to take more than 91 minutes. He said “on a good day” that same commute should take 45 minutes.

Around 8:30, WSDOT upped the commute time to 104 minutes from Federal Way to Seattle. The Federal Way to Bellevue commute was estimated at 122 minutes.

“It’s tough all over,” Treece said. “It’s nasty outside and we expect it to get nastier because the storm is moving in. “

The Snohomish County Medical Examiner has identified 51-year-old David C. Murray as the pedestrian who was killed Friday morning when he was struck by a pickup on Airport Way between Highway 99 and Admiralty Way in South Everett.

Murray was dead when deputies arrived at the scene of the incident at about 6 a.m. Friday, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

The Associated Press

OAKVILLE, Grays Harbor County — The Washington State Patrol says one person was killed and three injured in the collision between a car and pickup Monday night on the Highway 12 Mox-Chehalis bridge near Oakville in Grays Harbor County.

Yichun Xu, a 19-year-old community college student from China, entered not guilty pleas this morning to six charges, including vehicular homicide, for a Nov. 10 crash in Des Moines that led to the death of a 25-year-old woman days later at Harborview Medical Center.

Xu did not speak during his arraignment before King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. Roberts denied a request from Xu’s defense attorney, Scott Leist, who didn’t want his client photographed by the news media.

Xu is also charged with three counts of vehicular assault and two counts of reckless endangerment, accused of driving through a residential neighborhood at freeway speeds, running a stop sign and slamming his newly-purchased Mercedes-Benz into a BMW driven by Brenda Gomez-Zapata, who was declared brain dead on Nov. 19, according to King County prosecutors.

Also injured were three of Gomez-Zapata’s young family members, who she had been driving to a birthday party, court records say.

Members of Gomez-Zapata’s family, including her mother and fiancé, were in the gallery for Xu’s court appearance. He remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail.