BELLEVUE, Wash — A driver who hit a Washington State Patrol (WSP) trooper's vehicle early Thursday morning while driving the wrong direction on a major highway is in custody on suspicion of DUI.
Dash camera video released Friday by WSP shows a trooper driving and activating all of their lights as a car approaches it on Interstate 90 eastbound near Interstate 405.
The vehicle can be seen slowing down in the dash camera video but it still crashes into the patrol car that had come to a full stop. Neither the suspect or the trooper were injured in the collision.
The trooper can be seen calmly approaching the vehicle after it struck his vehicle and opening the passenger-side door, asking the driver why they were traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes.
This is the second incident in two months involving a trooper and a wrong-way driver near the point of I-90 and I-405 where they meet. In early November, a trooper was nearly hit by a wrong-way driver who later caused a fatal collision that left three people dead on Mercer Island.
Ari N. Quiroz-Jimenez, 30, was driving westbound on Interstate 90 in the eastbound lanes when he was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle near Island Crest Way on Mercer Island just after midnight on Oct. 30. Both the driver and the passenger of the vehicle that was hit died at the scene, as well as Quiroz-Jimenez.
In mid-November, a pregnant woman and toddler also were killed when they were involved in a collision caused by a 27-year-old driver going the wrong way on Interstate 5 near Olympia.