Woman killed while biking near Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal — UPDATE: RIP Maridee BonaDea

UPDATE 6/16: The woman has been identified as Maridee BonaDea. She was 76. BonaDea was a member of the Rainbow Riders bicycling group according to some friends who were mourning at the site today, West Seattle Blog reported. A web search reveals a deep trove of LGBTQ+ activism, and she was once featured as a Washington Trails Association volunteer. A ghost bike has been installed at the site, and a memorial is growing.

The Vashon Beachcomber has a very good story with a lot of details about both the fatal crash and BonaDea's life:

Biking meant everything" to Bonadea, [her wife Laura] Belt said.It was her escape, it was her exercise, it was what filled her soul."

Bonadea took long bike trips in her 20s, Belt said, and later commuted by bike from Vashon to downtown Seattle for work as an accountant. She was known to friends as a careful, experienced rider.

A woman was killed shortly before 8 a.m. Monday morning while biking on SW Wildwood Place, an arterial street with a long hill southeast of the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal, West Seattle Blog reported.

Our condolences to her friends and family.

The Seattle Police traffic collision investigations team was on site for a couple hours before the street was reopened, and the incident remains under investigation. Early details from SPD based on a witness statement say that the woman was biking eastbound up the hill on Wildwood when she struck an unoccupied parked car before she was struck by a box truck driver who was passing her. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The 60-year-old driver of the box truck remained at the scene. Photos of the scene from West Seattle Blog show a Vashon Trucking box truck without side guards stopped facing eastbound on Wildwood between 46th and 47th Avenues SW. It remains unclear what led to the woman's collision with the parked car. Early details are often incomplete, and it usually takes weeks before a traffic investigation report is available.

SW Wildwood Place is one of the least steep of all the options to heading east from the Ferry Terminal area, and it has been part of the route of Cascade Bicycle Club's Emerald City Ride. The street has no bike lanes, and the official Seattle bike map marks it as an un-marked street - no bicycle facility but commonly used." This is the same designation given to Marine View Drive SW, the street where Steve Hulsman was killed in December 2023 just a few blocks away.

After Hulsman's death, Seattle went 726 days without another person on a bicycle dying in a traffic collision. Now there have been three deaths in 183 days: Alley Rodriguez on Beacon Ave, Christian Salyer on 12th Ave, and now this morning's victim. There are few connecting details between them to suggest any particular trend other than that large vehicles were involved this morning and in the 12th Ave collision.