Louisville, Kentucky: Woman Dead After Car Hits Barrier on I-264 Ramp at Cane Run Road in Shively

A woman is dead after a car hit a barrier on the entry ramp to eastbound Interstate 264 in Shively on Wednesday evening, Louisville Metro Police said. The car was carrying three women when it struck the barrier near the entry of the interstate from Cane Run Road at around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11. One woman was taken to UofL Hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. The other two women in the car reported no injuries, police said.

What police say happened

Louisville Metro Police and Shively Police officers responded to a report of a motor vehicle collision near Cane Run Road and eastbound I-264 at around 6:30 p.m., LMPD spokesperson Aaron Ellis said in a news release carried by the Courier Journal. A preliminary investigation indicates the passenger vehicle, with the three women inside, was involved in a collision with a barrier near the entry of the interstate from Cane Run Road. WDRB and WAVE, in their own report of the same police account, described the crash as a single car hitting a barricade on the ramp where drivers enter the Watterson Expressway, as I-264 is known in Louisville, from Cane Run Road. Both reports agree on the core facts police released: one car, three women, a barrier at the ramp, and one death at the hospital.

The response and the road

Emergency medical services took the injured woman to UofL Hospital, where she later died, Ellis said. Police said no other passengers reported injuries, and no other vehicles were involved in the collision. The ramp is the entry point from Cane Run Road, a main road through Shively and the southwest side of Louisville, onto the eastbound lanes of I-264. Police have not said how long the ramp or any lanes were closed on Wednesday evening, and the reports published on Thursday do not describe any lasting closure for drivers on Thursday.

What police have not said

Police have not released the name of the woman who died. Neither report names the driver or says which seat the woman who died was in. Police have not said whether the driver was one of the women who reported no injuries, and they have announced no charges in the reports published on Thursday. What police did say about cause is limited to one point. "No other vehicles were involved with this collision, and it appears that speed may have been a contributing factor," Ellis said, in the statement carried by the Courier Journal.

The investigation

The Louisville Metro Police Traffic Unit is leading the investigation, Ellis said. Police have given no timetable for further findings. For now, the official record of the Wednesday evening crash is short: a car with three women hit a barrier at the Cane Run Road entry to eastbound I-264 at around 6:30 p.m., one woman died at UofL Hospital, the other two women reported no injuries, and speed may have played a part. The department is expected to release the woman's name once family notification is complete, as it does in other fatal crash cases. That release had not been published in the reports available on Thursday afternoon. WDRB and WAVE published their report in the first hours of Thursday, and the Courier Journal carried the police release later on Thursday morning, and the two accounts match each other on every fact police have released so far.