Street racing may have caused crash that injured eight people
Mar 3, 2025, 4:55 AM | Updated: 7:12 am
There was a fire at a vacant building in the 2400 block of S. Walker St. in South Seattle early Wednesday morning. (Seattle Fire Department)
(Seattle Fire Department)
A two-car crash that injured eight people, three of whom are in critical condition, may have been caused by two cars street racing.
The Seattle Police Department’s Traffic Collision Investigative Squad told KIRO7 T-V that just before the collision, around 2:15 a.m. Saturday, an Acura sedan was racing another car in the southbound lanes of Seattle’s Westlake Avenue North.
That’s when it’s believed the Acura veered into oncoming traffic and hit a Ford Explorer head on.
The crash occurred about a quarter mile east of the Aurora Avenue Bridge.
Seattle Fire spokesperson Kaila Lafferty says there were five people in the Acura and three in the Ford Explorer.
“Our crews responding on the scene noticed a large number of patients and immediately upgraded it to a Multiple Casualty Incident,” Lafferty said.
Firefighters ended up tearing the roof off the Acura to reach two people trapped inside.
“When they started triaging the patients they realized two of the patients were trapped. They needed to be extricated,” she said.
The Seattle Police Department’s Traffic Collision Investigative Team is working to piece together what led to the crash.
Medics transported all eight patients to Harborview Medical Center.
Because of the number of victims and the upgrade to a Multiple Casualty Incident response, the Seattle Fire Department deployed close to 40 firefighter/EMTs and paramedics to the scene, along with support and command staff.
So far, investigators have not concluded whether alcohol or drugs were involved in the crash, but officers told KIRO7 the driver of the sedan “appeared to be impaired.”
It’s also unclear whether the second car involved in the alleged street-racing incident has been identified.
“When the first responding crew rolled up to the scene and sees two vehicles with so many patients it’s instantly, how can we most effectively treat these patients, first off, the most-critically-injured patients and get them to a hospital to be treated by doctors as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” Lafferty said.
