Investigation continues for multi-car crash on West Mercer Way

Car fled the scene after three cars were hit last week.

By Ashley Hiruko • November 20, 2019 1:30 am

Police are working to determine what exactly happened when a car collided with three vehicles on West Mercer Way last week and fled the scene.

At about 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, a driver traveling southbound on West Mercer Way went off road, striking three parked cars. A purple Mercedes was hit first and impacted with a second car, a Toyota Corolla. The second car was then pushed into the third vehicle, a 2009 Kia Sedona, which went into a dirt berm.

Neighbors woke to the sound of a stuck car horn, said Peter Dornay, who owned the Sedona involved in the collision. It was Dornay’s daughter who heard the crash and stuck horn and ran outside to check on the commotion.

There she found the damage. And what remained of Olivia Morris’s car, one she had purchased about two weeks before. The Northwest University college sophomore had saved her money by working as a nanny. She spent weeks picking out the right car, and before the accident, it had finally begun to feel like her own, she said.

“I had driven my dad’s old car… it only had two doors and I wanted a four-door car,” Morris said. “ I had been saving all year. I wanted to pay for my own car and have it be mine.”

The car that struck the parked vehicles, and the driver behind the wheel, was nowhere to be found following the collision. It took a couple days, Dornay said, before it was located.

Commander Jeff Magnan with the Mercer Island Police Department said police tracked down the car and issued a warrant to bring it back to the police station. There it’s being processed and finger prints are being collected to help identify the driver.

“The owner of the car could have been multiple drivers at the house,” Magnan said. “The owner of the car put us in touch with their attorney and are not going to cooperate with the investigation. That’s their right.”

Depending on what police discover, there could be a couple of charges filed, Magnan said. Reckless driving is a possibility, and so is hit-and-run unintended. However, police will be unable to prove impairment now, if that was the case.

“Whatever evidence of DUI impairment is gone now,” Magnan said.