A Washington State Patrol trooper trying to stop a suspected DUI driver on I-5 South near South 336th Street ended early Sunday with one person dead and three others hurt after the driver fled about 13 miles south.
Federal Way police said they were called around 3:40 a.m. to help with a crash involving a trooper on I-5. By then, the pursuit had already turned into a fatal wreck involving a vehicle that had nothing to do with the chase. That car was carrying four people. One died at the scene. Three others were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
The chain of events began when the trooper attempted a traffic stop on a man suspected of driving under the influence, police said. The driver did not stop and kept going south on I-5. The suspect’s vehicle then hit the uninvolved car. After that first crash, the suspect lost control and crashed into the pursuing trooper’s vehicle, widening what had already become a deadly collision on one of the region’s busiest highways.
Police identified the driver as a 25-year-old man from Kent. He was arrested for DUI, eluding and vehicular homicide and is expected to be booked into King County Jail. The fatal hit came not from the chase itself, but from the moment the fleeing driver crossed into an unrelated vehicle traveling the same road.
What remains unanswered is the reason the trooper tried to stop him in the first place. Even without that detail, the case already has a clear shape: a traffic stop, a long flight, and a crash that left an uninvolved passenger dead before the night was over.
