Teen may have been trapped for hours after rollover crash near Round Lake

A teen may have spent hours injured inside a rolled over car after it crashed in an unincorporated area near Round Lake sometime Monday, fire officials said.

A Lake County sheriff's deputy discovered the 1994 Buick Regal on its roof in dense brush just before 2 p.m. off Wilson Road just south of Route 120, said Chris Covelli, Lake County sheriff's detective. Police believe the car was traveling north on Wilson Road when it left the roadway, struck a sign, a utility pole and at least one tree before coming to rest upside down and barely visible from the road.

Fire officials responding found the car 40 to 50 yards from the roadway, on an embankment about 20 feet above Wilson Road and very unstable, Fox Lake Fire Protection District Captain Brent Connelly said.

"We found a youth driver that was last seen at about 6 a.m. and didn't show up for school this morning," he said. "He was conscious and talking to us. We did have a lengthy extrication of about 20 to 25 minutes."

First, firefighters had to stabilize the car with rescue jacks and chained it to a nearby tree so it wouldn't rollover down the hill, he said.

The driver, 17, was taken to Fox Lake's Molidor Road fire station where Flight for Life was waiting to airlift him to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville with life threatening injuries, Connelly said.

The crash remains under investigation, Covelli said.

"Part of the investigation is to determine how long the vehicle was there," he said.