Suspect In Kirkland Fatal Hit-And-Run Turns Self In To Police

Washington State Patrol said driver of a vehicle suspected of hitting and killing a pedestrian on Interstate 405 turned himself in to police Sunday afternoon.

Washington State Patrol said a man was crossing the I-405 at Northeast 124th Street when he was struck by a vehicle at about 2 a.m. Sunday.

The victim died at the scene.

Police said a witness followed the fleeing vehicle and took down a license plate number, which was registered to a rental vehicle.

“The pedestrian was running across the freeway, and there’s no way the driver could have seen him. The car started speeding away, so I sped up and followed it. I got the plate number, got home and called the police," the witness told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

“It happened so quickly," she said. “He (the pedestrian) got all the way across the lanes. I thought he was maybe drunk and doing some kind of dance, but what he was doing was bracing himself because the car was going to hit him. He was coming from the right and made it all the way to the left. I thought he made it.”

“He wasn’t running. He was just kind of trotting across. There’s no reason for him [the driver] to run. There’s no way he could have stopped in time," the witness told KIRO.

Police said the suspect in the hit-and-run, a 30-year-old man from Bellevue, said he was unfamiliar with the U.S. legal system and was not sure how to proceed. The man said that after he contacted a friend, he realized he should contact police, the state patrol said.

Police said the man has no criminal record and has been in the U.S. for 2½ years.

The incident closed four of the five interstate lanes, and the scene was not cleared until around 4 a.m.