‘It was literally like hearing an explosion’: Boulder smashes car after falling from Renton overpass

RENTON, Wash. — A Renton driver is recalling the moment when what looked like a boulder dropped from an overpass and onto his car –missing him by just a few feet.

It happened early Thursday morning as he drove down Sunset Boulevard and under the Aberdeen Avenue overpass.

“For a couple of seconds, I was like, what happened? And then I see the rear windshield, it’s gone,” said Renton resident Daniel Veintimilla.

His back window and trunk were completely destroyed.

“It was like this big, bigger than my head I was like maybe this is what hit my car you know,” Veintimilla explained.

It was just a matter of seconds and only a couple of feet away from hitting him behind the wheel.

“It was literally like hearing an explosion. It was a loud boom! And like I said, I freaked out.”

It’s not the first rock-throwing incident that has happened in this area. Just last year, Renton and King County police arrested a man for chucking rocks at cars at street level.

“Those were rocks at throwable size, this would have had to been a big, big object,” said Detective Robert Onishi.

Onishi tells KIRO 7 News that even though it seems to be an ongoing trend, it’s unusual to see this big of an object dropped down onto a moving car.

“But then again, this is not something we’ve seen a pattern of and we haven’t seen anything like this that I can recall,” Onishi explained.

As for Veintimilla, he’s just glad he came out alive. He said he didn’t really think twice about it until his wife brought it up.

“Could you imagine if that person would have thrown that boulder just a millisecond before that, it could’ve hit you,” he said. “I don’t think about it much, I’m safe and I don’t want to dwell on it a lot.”

Veintimilla said potentially putting up fences on overpasses could make him feel safer.

Police say that would be tough since it’s a matter of which bridges, and what money would be used to fund it.

In Washington state, about 75% to 85% of the sun’s surface will be obscured by the moon, and if we’re able to view it (and only with eclipse safety glasses or indirect eclipse viewing equipment), the sun would appear to become a crescent, just like the crescent moon.

In Seattle, the eclipse will start at 8:07 a.m. Saturday with 80% maximum obscuration by 9:20 a.m., with the annular eclipse ending at 10:39 a.m.

If there is cloud cover preventing viewing of the eclipse, you’re likely to notice a significant darkening of the sky as the moon blocks most of the sun’s light.