Police are investigating after the driver of a silver Ford Escape SUV veered onto a Northeast Portland sidewalk Thursday morning, hitting pedestrians in a string of crashes that killed one man and left another with life-threatening injuries.
The crashes began just before noon, north of the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Jessup Street.
According to police, the Ford Escape was going north when the driver veered onto the east sidewalk just north of Jessup Street and hit two male pedestrians.
The driver then veered back into the northbound lanes of MLK, sideswiped a stopped Hyundai SUV, crossed the median, hit a Buick and Toyota head on in the southbound lanes and stopped, police said.
One of the pedestrians died at the scene and the other was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said.
The driver of the Ford Escape was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. The driver of the Buick and the driver of the Hyundai were also taken to a hospital, police said.
Police said the driver of the Ford Escape has two prosthetic legs, “but it’s unclear if that was a factor in the crashes.” The driver’s name hasn’t been released.
John Bryant, a TriMet bus driver who was in his bus at the time, said he saw someone drive onto the sidewalk in a small SUV, hit a pedestrian and keep going.
“A guy was standing there, and a car flew through the sidewalk going like 70, 80 miles an hour, and (the pedestrian) just flew off the ground,” Bryant said. “(The driver) kept going. He never slowed down.”
Bryant, 69, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the car then hit and killed a different pedestrian.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Kevin Allen described police arriving at an “absolutely chaotic scene” where people were “traumatized, terrified and very concerned.”
The person who was killed and the person in critical condition are both adults, according to Allen.
There is no indication the crash was intentional, Allen said.
“We need to make sure that we get a whole picture from everybody’s perspective before we make any final determinations about what took place and if anyone is criminally responsible,” he said. “This is definitely one of the more significant crashes that we’ve seen so far this year.”
At 12:40 p.m., about an hour after the crashes, a shoe that Bryant said belonged to the first pedestrian hit was still on the sidewalk, and the body of the second pedestrian struck remained in the street under a blanket.
Erica Fahnbulleh, 52, said she was on her way to the Safeway when she and others saw the crashes.
“I came here, and I saw the guy laying on the ground, and people were around him, and he was just laying there. And I began to pray for him,” she said.
The death marks the 20th traffic fatality in Portland so far this year.
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
