Two pedestrians were struck by a car in the San Fernando Valley early Sunday morning, with the victims eventually located several blocks from where the collision occurred and one person taken into custody. The call came into dispatch at 3:35 a.m., according to a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson.
The collision happened at the intersection of Winnetka Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard, but the two victims were ultimately found on the 8300 block of Vanalden Avenue in Northridge, a few blocks west of where the crash occurred, according to KTLA. One of the two was loaded into an ambulance, while another was tended to by paramedics on the ground at the scene. The conditions of both victims were not immediately known, though a Los Angeles Fire Department official said one victim sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
LAPD took one person into custody in relation to the collision, though that person's identity had not been released. Police are still investigating the circumstances of the crash, which unfolded in the pre-dawn hours as the Valley slept.
A Corridor With a History of Danger
The stretch of Roscoe Boulevard where the crash took place sits on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's High Injury Network, the roughly 6% of city streets responsible for about two-thirds of the city's severe and fatal traffic crashes, according to research compiled by L&F Brown. Roscoe Boulevard itself ranks among the city's top 10 highest-collision surface streets, logging more than 5,300 reported crashes over multi-year monitoring periods, a pattern attributed to its heavy commercial traffic and multi-lane speeds, per the California Accident Attorneys Blog.
Nearby, the intersection of Winnetka Avenue and Nordhoff Street recorded three separate injury collisions within a nine-month span leading into early 2026, according to the same L&F Brown reporting. Investigating serious pedestrian collisions on Valley surface streets falls primarily to the LAPD's Valley Traffic Division, which oversees traffic investigations across the department's sprawling San Fernando Valley footprint, according to GoSuits.
Open Questions on Charges
It remains unclear whether the person in custody will face charges tied to fleeing the scene, driving under the influence, or another offense — details that have not yet been released by police. If the driver did leave the scene of an injury collision, California Vehicle Code § 20001 makes that a chargeable felony punishable by up to three years in state prison, or four years if the crash results in death or permanent, serious injury, according to Cefali Law. Separately, Vehicle Code § 20003 requires drivers involved in an injury collision to stay at the scene, provide identifying information, and render reasonable assistance, including calling for emergency medical help, per Cutter Law P.C.
A Citywide Pattern of Fleeing Drivers
Los Angeles has an unusually high rate of drivers who flee collisions altogether. City officials have reported that nearly 50% of all motor vehicle collisions in the city involve a driver who leaves the scene, compared to a national hit-and-run average of roughly 11%, according to Kelmansky Law. That disparity is part of why the city maintains a Hit-and-Run Reward Program Trust Fund offering standing rewards ranging from $1,000 for property-damage cases up to $50,000 for fatal collisions, intended to encourage tipsters to help police identify fleeing drivers.
The stakes behind these numbers are stark: traffic collisions in Los Angeles killed 290 people in 2025, with more than 150 of those deaths involving pedestrians, marking the third consecutive year that traffic fatalities in the city outpaced homicides. Just weeks ago, LAPD's Valley Traffic Division worked with federal law enforcement to apprehend a hit-and-run suspect accused of severely injuring two pedestrians in another San Fernando Valley crash, underscoring how frequently detectives in the division are handling cases like Sunday's.
Sunday's crash adds to a string of pedestrian collisions Hoodline has tracked across the Valley in recent months, including a fatal Pacoima pickup collision in July and a hit-and-run that killed a pedestrian on Sherman Way in Van Nuys in May. No further details on the identity of the person in custody or the victims' conditions have been released. The KTLA report was contributed to by Orion Powell and Sofia Pop Perez, with Will Conybeare listed as the article's author.
