3 killed, several injured in Oakland pedestrian crash

Three people were killed and several others injured when a vehicle hit both pedestrians and cars near International Boulevard and 85th Avenue in East Oakland, a violent scene that immediately raised the question at the center of the investigation: what caused the crash. Fire officials said the collision happened at about 11:15 p.m. Saturday and that the circumstances leading up to it were not immediately known.

The Oakland Fire Department said three injured people were taken to local hospitals, where two were listed in critical condition and one in serious condition. The driver and another injured person were still awaiting medical transport near the scene, while two additional people, including the suspect, were waiting to be treated for minor injuries. Officials did not immediately release the suspect’s name or the ages of the victims.

The unanswered questions matter because International Boulevard has long been one of Oakland’s most dangerous corridors. City safety planners have identified it as part of the High Injury Network, the small share of streets that accounts for a large share of severe and fatal crashes. Oakland’s Safe Oakland Streets initiative, a citywide effort to prevent serious and fatal traffic crashes and eliminate inequities, has made that network a focus, and the city launched a traffic-death monitoring page in October 2022 to track deadly collisions more transparently.

The crash also came after another serious pedestrian incident in Oakland earlier in May, when eight people were injured after a vehicle drove onto a sidewalk and the driver fled on foot. That pattern has kept attention on whether the city has done enough on corridors like International Boulevard, where officials have already installed pedestrian-scale lighting and sidewalk improvements using $9.9 million in Clean California money and $1.5 million in state housing-and-sustainability grants. The latest deaths now put new pressure on investigators to determine whether the trigger was impairment, speed, street design or a medical emergency, and on city leaders to decide what protections can be put in place immediately on streets already known to be high-risk.