On a crowded Sunday in the popular Chilean coastal resort city of Vina del Mar, a devastating traffic incident left the nation in mourning: an off-duty Chilean Navy member driving a private vehicle plowed into the city’s iconic Caupolican open-air market, leaving multiple people dead and dozens more injured. The Chilean Navy confirmed the crash in an official statement shortly after the incident unfolded, confirming the driver’s affiliation with the service.
Security camera footage shared widely across social media captured the harrowing moment the vehicle crashed through crowded market stalls, while subsequent clips showed onlookers chasing and shouting at the driver as authorities transported him to a nearby police vehicle for processing. The Navy’s initial statement confirmed the crash caused multiple fatalities and a range of injuries among those affected, and said the branch was fully cooperating with local law enforcement and government investigators to unpack the full sequence of events leading to the tragedy. While official Navy communications did not release an exact fatality count early on, local Chilean media outlets have reported at least six people were killed in the incident.
Medical officials at Vina del Mar’s Gustavo Fricke Hospital confirmed that five injured people — including two infants — were admitted for treatment of traumatic injuries that are not considered life-threatening. Two additional injured people were treated and released from the facility shortly after the crash. Emergency first responders including local police, fire crews, and paramedics provided on-site triage and treatment to dozens of affected market-goers. “At this stage of the evaluation, they are stable and out of life-threatening danger, but of course they are still awaiting the completion of all the examinations required in these cases,” said Denise Cataldo, the hospital’s deputy director, in a press briefing.
Interior Undersecretary Máximo Pavez confirmed that the driver, who remains the only person detained in connection with the incident, tested negative for alcohol consumption in a mandatory breathalyzer test. Vina del Mar Police Prefect Col. Jorge Guaita told reporters that the driver claims he has no memory of the incident, and that the root cause of the crash remains undetermined as of Sunday evening.
Initial witness accounts paint a clearer picture of the incident’s sequence: Col. Guaita shared that witness statements confirm the vehicle was traveling in the correct traffic lane at a high rate of speed before mounting the adjacent sidewalk and spinning out of control. “Fortunately, the bus stop brought it to a halt. Otherwise, it might have continued forward and caused even more damage,” Guaita told reporters. Other witnesses told local media the driver may have lost control after a minor prior collision with another vehicle.
Chilean President José Antonio Kast shared his reaction to the tragedy on the social platform X, writing that the incident had plunged “the entire country in mourning.” Kast also confirmed that all state institutions were coordinating to support affected families and clarify full accountability for the crash: “All state institutions are working to assist those affected and to establish with complete clarity the responsibilities for this painful event,” he said.
The Caupolican open-air market, where the crash occurred, is a longstanding weekly fixture in Vina del Mar, operating every Thursday and Sunday on the city’s upper outskirts. The market hosts more than 1,000 registered stalls alongside hundreds of informal vendors in surrounding blocks, and regularly draws large crowds of both local residents and tourists visiting the coastal city.