California Highway Patrol officers are investigating a second pedestrian death on Interstate 5 within a week, after a naked man was struck and killed Sunday evening in the southbound lanes of the busy thoroughfare, according to CHP officials.
A 30-year-old Arleta man was struck and killed Sunday evening, according to a report by Sgt. I. Sanchez of the CHP Newhall-area Office.
CHP dispatchers received a call at 8:06 p.m. regarding a nude pedestrian who was walking through traffic on the northbound side of the freeway, north of the Highway 118 interchange, according to the CHP report of the incident.
Officers suspect the man crossed all northbound lanes on foot and then jumped the median wall and then tried to cross the southbound lanes, where he was struck and killed.
By the time CHP officers responded to the scene minutes later, they encountered a man whose body had been struck by numerous vehicles, lying mostly in the carpool and second-left-most lane, according to the report.
It’s not clear at this time why the man decided to cross the freeway on foot. There was no disabled vehicle at the scene of the collision.
Officials noted in the report that one of the drivers, a 40-year-old Baldwin Park woman driving a 2014 Scion, stayed at the scene after the collision. Her vehicle sustained major front-end damage, Sanchez noted.
No other drivers stayed at the scene, according to the report. She was not charged with any crime, according to the preliminary report.
The incident prompted the second such CHP investigation into a fatal collision in a week for a pedestrian on Interstate 5 in the Newhall office’s coverage area.
The first collision also involved a man who tried to cross the northbound lanes of the freeway on foot. The man was struck multiple times and his identity has not yet been released by the coroner’s office.
That collision took place on the northbound side near Lyons Avenue. He was pronounced deceased at the scene around 4:52 a.m. Wednesday.
