A Washington State Patrol trooper was helping a stranded driver on Interstate 5 near Des Moines early Sunday when a southbound car slammed into his SUV, setting off a chain-reaction crash that injured three people and shut down the freeway for nearly four hours.
According to a Washington State Patrol account, Trooper MacDonald contacted a disabled vehicle on Sunday that was stopped fully inside the HOV lane. The agency says MacDonald suspected the disabled vehicle's driver was impaired and had begun a DUI investigation when another vehicle struck his patrol car. The The Daily Chronicle reports the stop happened around 4:30 a.m., when a trooper in an unmarked Ford Explorer pulled over to assist a driver in a disabled Acura TL still sitting in the HOV lane.
A southbound Honda Civic then struck the trooper's SUV, pushing it into the disabled Acura, the outlet reports. The trooper and two teenage girls who had been in the disabled vehicle were outside their cars at the moment of impact and were not hurt, according to the same account.
Driver and Two Passengers Hospitalized
The Honda's driver and two passengers were injured and taken to Harborview Medical Center, with one passenger seriously hurt, per the Chronicle's reporting. The driver was arrested on suspicion of impairment, according to KOMO News. The Chronicle reported that the driver was expected to be booked for investigation of vehicular assault and DUI.
The wreckage of the three vehicles blocked the freeway for almost four hours, the Chronicle reports. FOX 13 Seattle reports the crash marked the third time a state patrol vehicle had been struck along that freeway corridor in just 10 days.
A Pattern Troopers Have Seen Before
This was not Trooper MacDonald's first brush with a crash while working the roadside. The state patrol says MacDonald had a patrol car struck by an impaired driver last year, and that he was also outside his vehicle at the time and was not injured. The agency's post frames the danger plainly, stating that impaired driving puts everyone on the road at risk, including safety workers.
Washington's Move Over law, codified at RCW 46.61.212, requires drivers approaching a stopped emergency or work-zone vehicle on a multi-lane highway to slow down and, when safe given traffic conditions, move over a lane or away from the shoulder the vehicle occupies. Separately, RCW 46.61.522 outlines vehicular assault as a class B felony that can apply when a driver under the influence, or acting with disregard for others' safety, causes substantial bodily harm.
Roadside Strikes in 2026
FOX 13 reported that in the first nine months of 2026, 64 state patrol units were struck while conducting traffic enforcement or collision investigations, with 19 troopers injured in those crashes. The near-miss outside Des Moines adds to a run of close calls for troopers working alongside fast-moving freeway traffic.
Impaired driving remains a major factor in the state's road deaths even as the overall numbers improve. Washington recorded 659 traffic deaths in 2025, down from 737 in 2024 and 809 in 2023, according to preliminary figures reported by the Washington State Standard. Impaired drivers were linked to 297 of those deaths, or 45 percent, in 2025, compared with 370 deaths, or 50 percent, in 2024, though the outlet notes several dozen lab tests were still pending and that figure could still rise.
High-visibility enforcement funded by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission produced more than 57,000 interactions between police and drivers in 2025, up from roughly 31,500 in 2022, the Standard reports. Troubling as the Des Moines crash was, state officials continue pointing to that enforcement push as a reason the broader death toll has been trending down.
