Tragedy hit a dangerous Puyallup street. Neighbors push traffic-safety changes
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Neighbors petition city after series of crashes near Seventh St NE intersection
- City traffic-calming process needs petitions, scoring, study and neighborhood vote
- Residents gather petition under city policy to trigger traffic study
Traffic wasn’t a problem when Greg McGough moved into his Puyallup neighborhood in 2021.
Veterans Memorial Bridge over the Puyallup River was closed at the time for rehabilitation, and McGough’s home at Seventh Street Northeast and Second Avenue Northeast was on a quiet street without the traffic from the bridge.
“Just wait,” neighbors told him.
The bridge, a busy commuter route, reopened in 2022. Since then, the 45-year-old has almost been hit while working in his side yard, a driver crashed into his garage, and he estimates he’s called 911 for half a dozen wrecks on the corner. He’s seen more crashes than that but could tell in those cases that someone was already on the phone with police.
“I see and I hear wrecks all the time,” he said.
Most recently, he was home Oct. 6 when a truck hit and critically injured a Puyallup High School cross country runner in the intersection. There have been no updates released on the boy’s status since the wreck.
The boy wasn’t the only teenager hit in the area recently. McGough said a vehicle hit a teenager on an e-bike at the intersection earlier this year.
Several neighbors who spoke at the City Council meeting on Oct. 7, including McGough, told city leaders that traffic safety has been a longtime concern in the area. They said they’ve had many close calls, that wrecks in the area are common and that vehicles have hit pedestrians, bikers and pets.
The problem, McGough told The News Tribune, is that traffic backs up during peak commute times at the stoplight at Fifth Street Northeast and East Main Avenue. Cars turn onto side streets in the neighborhood to avoid that light, often taking Seventh Street Northeast.
He wants traffic-safety measures like speed bumps, more stop signs and possibly another traffic light on problem streets. He’s collecting signatures and told The News Tribune that he already has enough to meet the city’s threshold to seriously consider changes near where the boy was hit this month. He thinks he might take the petition to the city as soon as next week.
Puyallup’s traffic-calming program outlines a process where residents who gather signatures from 51 percent of their neighbors can ask the city to consider traffic-calming measures in their neighborhood.
Puyallup spokesperson Eric Johnson told The News Tribune in an email that the city looks at things like speed and the number of vehicles and pedestrians to score a request.
“If it scores 45 or above, then staff conduct a traffic study of that intersection,” Johnson wrote. “Once the study concludes, we then present those findings to the residents through a neighborhood meeting, which would include the traffic mitigation measures that are recommended.”
Then the neighbors vote.
“If the residents approve the plan at the meeting, then ballots are mailed to all the households within 300 feet of that intersection along with a copy of the plan,” he wrote. “At least 60 percent of ballots sent out need to be returned and respond favorably to the plan in order for it to be finalized and implemented.”
Asked how long that process takes, from when residents hand over the signatures to when new traffic safety measures are in place, Johnson wrote: “that is difficult to say.”
The sooner residents turn in a petition, he wrote, “the sooner we can review it, score it, and potentially start the traffic study.”
Asked what traffic-safety measures the city has taken at the intersection of Seventh Street Northeast and Second Avenue Northeast and in the neighborhood in recent years, and what traffic studies have been done in the area, Johnson wrote: “The City currently has two stop signs at that intersection, both on 2nd Ave NE for east and westbound traffic.”
McGough wants it to be a four-way stop, and he wants speed bumps. Drivers constantly run the stop signs that are already there, he said.
“They’re actually getting some pressure, and hopefully they actually do something about it,” he said about the city.
McGough emphasized that there are no stop signs or traffic lights for more than a mile between Valley Avenue East and Main Avenue East, a busy commuter route. Besides the stop signs and speed bumps on his street, he thinks a traffic light at Fifth Street Northeast and Fifth Avenue Northeast would make the neighborhood safer, among other things.
“No telling how long it would take,” he said about a possible timeline for the changes. “Or, they could come out here tomorrow and put up four stop signs and it would help alleviate people speeding through the neighborhood.”
He emphasized that Stewart Elementary School is about a block away.
“If you know it’s a problem, why haven’t you done something about it?” he said. “The city knows this is an issue. There’s no way they haven’t known this is an issue.”
What happened on Oct. 6?
No one has shared public updates on the condition of the runner hit by the truck on Oct. 6. Asked by The News Tribune for an update on the investigation, the boy’s condition and his age, and whether the Major Collision Response Team has decided to send the investigation to the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office for possible charges, Puyallup Police spokesperson Capt. Kevin Gill said he didn’t have any updates Monday.
“The investigation is still active,” he said via email. “I don’t have an update on the student today. If I get one, I’ll let you know.”
A spokesperson for St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, where crews took the boy after the wreck, also said Monday that the hospital did not have any status updates to share.
Puyallup Municipal Court records show that police cited the 27-year-old driver (who showed no signs of impairment) for operating a vehicle without an ignition interlock device and gave him an infraction for operating a vehicle without insurance and without a valid license.
The probable-cause statement of the arresting officer gives this account of what happened:
The boy was running east on Second Avenue Northeast when the southbound truck on 7th Street Northeast hit him in the intersection, and he “reportedly traveled through the air roughly 15 feet before landing on the ground,” the statement said.
There are stop signs at the intersection going east and west, but not north and south, and there’s a tree at the intersection that “would make it difficult to see anything approaching from the west,” the statement said.
The officer arrived about 4 p.m., just after the wreck, and believed the boy’s injuries could be life-threatening. The boy was unconscious, and the officer helped stabilize his neck until Central Pierce Fire & Rescue crews arrived and took him to the hospital.
The driver “appeared visibly upset about the collision,” the officer wrote. The driver told the officer that he was test-driving the truck and “was on his way to deposit a check at the bank to pay for insurance,” the officer wrote, but did not have insurance at the time of the wreck. He allegedly told the officer he thought he was going 15 mph on the 25 mph street, and that he slowed down when he saw the runner as the truck entered the intersection but couldn’t stop in time.
The officer found that his “driving status returned cancelled with an Ignition Interlock Device requirement,” the statement said, and he didn’t find an ignition interlock device (a breathalyzer connected to a vehicle’s ignition) in the truck.
93 crashes in 10 years
Crash data The News Tribune requested from the state Department of Transportation identified 93 crashes in the area in the past 10 years. The News Tribune asked for crash data for Seventh Street Northeast between Fourth Avenue Northeast and East Main Avenue; Fifth Street Northeast between Fourth Avenue Northeast and East Main Avenue; and Fourth Avenue Northeast, Third Avenue Northeast and Second Avenue Northeast between Fifth Street Northeast and Seventh Street Northeast. The data listed 68 of those wrecks as “no apparent injury.”
Ian Cuthbertson, 54, lives across the street from McGough. He moved there in 1999. For many of those 26 years, his desk looked out over the intersection, and he said he regularly saw drivers flying through it.
“People just run that stop sign all the time,” he said. “It’s been happening the whole time we’ve lived there.”
He said he’s almost been hit as a pedestrian, and a car hit him when he was biking on Fifth Avenue Northeast a few years ago.
“I basically woke up on the pavement trying to figure out what happened,” he said about the bike wreck.
On his morning walk to catch public transit to work, he’s had to jump out of the way of vehicles, he said, to avoid getting hit. A family friend who was staying with them got into a wreck trying to drive across Fifth Street Northeast on Second Avenue Northeast, he said. A black lab in the neighborhood named Filson was hit by a car, and his hip hasn’t been the same since.
“The commonality there is people try to blast through any number of different side streets that just aren’t controlled,” he said.
He said it’s understandable that people get frustrated when traffic backs up at the light at Fifth and Main, and it makes sense that drivers look for some way to release that pressure. The idea that people get hurt as a result “shouldn’t be acceptable to anybody,” he said.
He worries about the safety of the kids on their bikes and scooters in the neighborhood.
“I realize that anything we do there is going to inconvenience people,” he said about speed bumps and other possible fixes. He figures there’s not an easy solution that would make everyone happy.
He thinks the combination of speed bumps and stop signs is probably a good idea. More stop signs alone, he worries, would be ignored by drivers like the two that are there already.
“The sort of vindictive, like: ‘You really shouldn’t have gone down this side street’ devil on my shoulder” envisions a right turn only island, he said, that would prevent drivers who take the side streets from reaching Main, and instead force them back to the stoplight they’re trying to avoid, but he doesn’t think that’s a realistic option.
“People drive too fast through this neighborhood, because they’re trying to get away from that light,” he said. “That light causes a lot of dangerous things to happen.”
Like McGough, he pointed out that Stewart Elementary School is just a block away and that there are pedestrians and bikes on the streets from the Riverwalk Trail nearby. It’s an area with a lot of chances for something really bad to happen, he said.
“It seems like people have known about this for a long time and that not much has been done,” he said. “We could be doing better, I feel like, in the neighborhood as a whole.”
At the same time, he points out, they’re centered between two major choke points: the Puyallup River at the Veterans Bridge and railroad tracks on the other side of East Main.
“It’s not like there’s something being ignored that’s really easy to fix,” he said. “I also feel like we probably could be doing more to keep people safe in their own neighborhoods.”
This story was originally published October 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
