A 17-year-old boy sustained minor injuries when a vehicle struck him in a crosswalk on Oct. 17.
The accident caused traffic backup that evening as Kirkland police and fire assessed the incident in the Finn Hill neighborhood.
A police traffic collision report, obtained through public records, states the boy walked into a designated crosswalk on 84th Avenue Northeast at the intersection of Northeast 141st Street. He was then hit by a 55-year-old woman driving a 2009 Ford Explorer northbound and he flew backwards several feet.
The boy suffered a chipped tooth, cut lip, scraped elbow and knee. He was taken to EvergreenHealth Medical Center to be further evaluated after giving a statement to police.
He told police he intended to get to the bus stop on the west side of 84th Avenue Northeast. Wearing headphones, he saw the SUV but “thought that they would stop as he was entering the crosswalk.”
The woman and two witnesses state it appeared the boy did not look both ways before quickly walking directly in front of the SUV.
The vehicle was no more than 20 to 25 feet away from the crosswalk, the documents state.
“The driver of [the SUV] advised that she never even noticed him there and wasn’t able to stop in time by the time he had walked in front of her vehicle,” according to the police narrative.
The woman said she was going 31 to 32 miles per hour in the 35 mile per hour zone.
A witness who was traveling behind the woman in the SUV said he “noticed the pedestrian was not slowing down or even looking in either direction for traffic” and that he continued at the same pace into the street.
A second witnesses said she didn’t think the SUV driver would have time to stop. After the boy was hit, she saw the driver immediately pull over and the boy pull out his cell phone to tell someone he was just involved in an accident shortly after impact.
The boy’s shoes and headphones were damaged and the police are currently holding the headphones as evidence.
Editor’s note: Many members of the community alerted the Kirkland Reporter to the incident last week but Kirkland police Lt. Mike Murray could not confirm that a pedestrian was hit. The Reporter only recently learned of the accident after obtaining the police traffic collision report from the Kirkland Police Department’s public records division.
