Police said that an officer was responding to a crashed vehicle when his own vehicle was hit. The crash into the cop car caused a five car chain reaction. Portland police said that the officer’s patrol vehicle was rear-ended. That caused traffic on I-84 to shut down much of the interstate for two hours.
This all took place early Saturday morning. An officer was responding to a report of a single-car crash on I-84 eastbound near Northeast 33rd Avenue. Nothing has been said yet whether the driver was distracted before he crashed into the police cruiser. However, the responding officer arrived after the call to find a silver sedan sitting in the right lane. It looked to have crashed into the side wall. There was no driver in the car. He reportedly had walked away and was not found at the scene according to Portland police.
Once the office surveyed the scene, he ordered a tow truck to remove the blocking vehicle from the interstate. Not too long after that, the officer’s vehicle was hit from behind.
A chain reaction was now in motion. The driver of a four-door sedan came through at top speed. The driver put on the emergency brake as the oncoming driver lost control, spun into the side wall, then kept spinning and hit the patrol car while facing forward again. At this point, three more drivers crashed while trying to avoid the out of control vehicle.
I-84 was fully reopened after tow trucks removed the crashed vehicles. Paramedics responded to the scene along with other police officers. The responding police officer and a passenger in another vehicle were both taken to the hospital. The injuries sustained were not serious.
