Ketchikan police say the victim of Thursday’s fatal car crash into Ketchikan Creek was a 57-year-old woman from Auburn, Indiana. The woman, who was walking along the boardwalk when the car struck her, was visiting the city on a cruise with her husband.
Officials have not yet named the victim or the driver, who survived and was rescued from the creek.
The crash happened just off of Creek Street. Ketchikan Creek runs through the center of the busy downtown shopping district downtown.
Police said during a press conference Thursday evening that the couple was walking toward the Tongass Historical Museum along the boardwalk just after 8:30 in the morning when the driver accelerated through a parking space in the Centennial parking lot. The car struck the Indiana woman, broke through the wooden railing, and landed in the creek.
“That vehicle accelerated at a pace where no pedestrian could have gotten out of the way. It was at the wrong moment for that woman. That vehicle grabbed her and took her over that embankment as it entered the creek,” Ketchikan Police Chief Eric Mattson said during the press conference.
The woman was pronounced dead at the island’s hospital. Officials said her family has been notified. Mattson said her husband, a retired volunteer firefighter in Indiana, was also taken to the hospital with injuries.
Ketchikan Fire Chief Rick Hines said that the driver went into cardiac arrest, but they don’t know yet if that caused the crash or was a result of it.
“We don’t know definitively what occurred that caused that vehicle to go in the water,” Hines said.
Mattson said they interviewed the driver of the car when she regained consciousness but are still investigating the crash. The car was removed from the creek Thursday afternoon. It will remain in police custody until the investigation is complete.
