A man was struck and killed on southbound Interstate 5 near the Old Town Avenue on-ramp in San Diego early Saturday morning, in a crash that shut down four lanes of the freeway for hours. The California Highway Patrol's fatality feed recorded the collision at approximately 2:39 a.m., describing it as a vehicle-versus-pedestrian incident.
According to the CHP fatality feed, the pedestrian was first seen walking in the right lane of southbound I-5 before he was later found lying in lane two. A white Toyota was reported pulled over on the right shoulder nearby with its hazard lights flashing. The same feed noted that one of the vehicles parked on the shoulder just north of Old Town took off before CHP could collect information from the driver.
The crash was also detailed in a post from California Accident Alerts on Facebook, which reported that the pedestrian died after being hit by at least one vehicle on the freeway. Neither the dossier nor CHP's public feed has identified the man who died, and it remains unclear exactly how many vehicles were involved in the collision.
Lanes Shut Down for Hours as Crews Responded
In the aftermath of the crash, lanes two through five of southbound I-5 were closed while crews worked the scene, with only lane one reopened to traffic, per the CHP fatality feed. A cleanup crew, identified in CHP's log as Clean Harbor, was also dispatched to perform biohazard cleanup at the site.
A Stretch of Freeway With a Troubled History
Saturday's fatality adds to a string of deadly pedestrian incidents on this same corridor of I-5 near Old Town in recent years. In February 2024, a man died after being hit by a car while walking in the northbound traffic lanes near Old Town, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. That crash, which happened about 11:45 p.m. north of Old Town Avenue, involved a white Subaru Soltero driven by a 51-year-old San Diego man, and all northbound lanes were closed for roughly an hour during the investigation.
This past August, a separate rollover crash killed one person on northbound I-5 near Old Town, as reported by FOX 5 San Diego. That crash was first reported around 2:20 a.m. on August 1, just south of the Interstate 8 interchange, and all lanes did not reopen until around 2 p.m. that same day. FOX 5 San Diego also reported that a pedestrian was struck and killed on Oct. 14 while attempting to cross the northbound lanes near the Old Town Avenue overcrossing, at about 8 p.m.
A separate report from 10News described a man being struck and killed while walking through traffic on the northbound lanes of I-5 near Old Town Avenue.
What Investigators Haven't Said
CHP's public tracking of the crash offers only the bare operational details logged by dispatchers overnight: the time, the lane closures, the vehicle that left the shoulder, and the cleanup response. The identity of the man who died, the number of vehicles actually involved in the collision, and whether the driver who left the scene faces any potential consequences all remain open questions as of Saturday morning.
