Two citations in Eisenhower pileup that killed Indiana man
A chain-reaction crash that killed an Indiana man on I-290 in Elmhurst was caused by a semitrailer driver who didn't slow down to avoid stopped traffic, authorities said Friday.
The seven-vehicle crash just before 2 p.m. Thursday killed 37-year-old Christopher G. Follett of Munster, whose Chrysler sedan was forced under the back of one semitrailer when another semitrailer hit him from behind, Illinois State Police said in a news release.
Three other drivers were treated at hospitals for injuries that were not life-threatening, two at Elmhurst Hospital and one at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, police said.
Initial response and accident reconstruction completely closed the inbound Eisenhower at St. Charles Road for nearly 13 hours, sending drivers onto North Avenue and other side streets in the Elmhurst area.
The truck driver who authorities said caused the initial collision was cited for failure to reduce speed to avoid a crash, as was the driver of a Toyota van that police said didn't slow down to avoid hitting a Subaru SUV that was pushed into its path by a collision with a trailer earlier in the chain.
The pileup started with three stopped vehicles in the far right lane and spanned across the width of the expressway, with one vehicle eventually being pushed into the left-side concrete barrier, police said.
When the truck that caused the crash, a Kenworth driven by a 47-year-old Wisconsin man, first hit Follett's Chrysler, it pushed his vehicle under an International truck. That truck's front end hit a Peterbilt semitrailer, and its back end veered left into other lanes of traffic and struck the Subaru SUV.
The Subaru was forced into a Ford SUV and then was hit by a Toyota van driven by a 25-year-old Bartlett man, who was ticketed in the crash, police said. After it was struck by the Subaru, the Ford hit the left-side concrete barrier.
Police reopened the road to traffic about 2:50 a.m. Friday.