A 33-year-old Seattle woman died early Monday after she exited a moving vehicle on northbound Interstate 5 in Federal Way and was struck by another car. The crash happened around 12:17 a.m. near South 272nd Street, shutting down lanes on one of the region's busiest freeway corridors for nearly four hours.
According to FOX 13 Seattle, the vehicle carrying the woman was traveling in lane one when she got out while it was still in motion. A second driver, who investigators say was traveling northbound in lane three of five, then struck her. She was pronounced dead at the scene, and both vehicles stopped on the right shoulder afterward.
Washington State Patrol troopers responded to the scene and are still trying to determine why the woman exited the car in the first place. Investigators have not released information about the driver of the vehicle she left, and it remains unclear whether the two knew each other or what prompted her to step out into freeway traffic. Authorities are also working to determine whether drugs or alcohol played any role in the crash, per the same report.
Freeway Shut Down for Nearly Four Hours
The collision blocked the roadway for about three hours and 45 minutes as troopers investigated, snarling the overnight commute along a stretch of I-5 that is already squeezed by construction. The northbound corridor near South 272nd Street sits within an active work zone where WSDOT and Sound Transit are building an auxiliary lane and light-rail extension infrastructure, adding another layer of complexity for drivers navigating that section even on a normal night.
Open questions remain about what led up to the moment the woman left the vehicle while it was moving in the far-left lane, why she was on foot on a controlled-access highway at all, and whether the driver she left now faces any scrutiny. Washington law generally bars pedestrians from interstates altogether, with only narrow exceptions such as walking to an emergency call box, under Revised Code of Washington 46.61.250. Separately, if reckless or impaired driving is found to have proximately caused a death, state law under RCW 46.61.520 defines that as vehicular homicide, a Class A felony punishable by up to life in prison. Neither statute has been cited by investigators in connection with this crash, and no charges have been announced.
A Familiar and Deadly Stretch of I-5
This is not the first fatal pedestrian incident on this section of freeway. In May 2025, a pedestrian was struck and killed while running across lanes of southbound I-5 near State Route 18 in Federal Way, an incident that also blocked freeway lanes for hours, as previously reported by KING 5. And in September 2025, a 24-year-old driver fled on foot after striking a WSDOT vehicle on I-5 in King County, only to be struck and killed hours later when he re-entered freeway traffic, according to the Washington State Patrol.
Hoodline previously reported a deadly pre-dawn SR 18 crash near this same interchange, and another fatal, impairment-linked collision closer to the Federal Way Triangle earlier this year. Together, the incidents point to a stretch of freeway that keeps producing fatal encounters between vehicles and people outside them.
Part of a Statewide Pattern
Washington recorded 810 traffic deaths in 2023, a 33-year high that included a record 157 pedestrian fatalities statewide, according to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Statewide traffic deaths have been slowly trending downward through 2024 and 2025 since that peak, though pedestrian incidents along the I-5 corridor in King County remain an ongoing concern that the Washington State Patrol has publicly flagged.
Nationally, freeway pedestrian deaths represent a smaller but still significant share of the overall toll. The Governors Highway Safety Association found that 17.6 percent of all U.S. pedestrian fatalities in 2022 happened on interstates and freeways, compared with 60.4 percent on non-freeway arterials — a reminder that while most pedestrian deaths occur on ordinary streets, freeway encounters remain especially lethal when they happen. Federal data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also shows adults aged 30 to 34 accounted for 676 pedestrian deaths nationwide in 2023, one of the more heavily affected adult age brackets.
For now, the central questions in Monday's crash — why the woman got out of the car, what her relationship was to the driver, and whether impairment or foul play played any role — remain unanswered. The Washington State Patrol's investigation is ongoing.
