Woman injured in four-car wreck dies
Janet G. Cummings, 41, of Lake in the Hills had admired the man who would be her husband from afar for what seemed like forever.
One day in the late 1980s, the song "Blue Monday" came on to the jukebox at a local bar and for the first time, Doug Cummings spotted her and asked her to dance, causing her to "flip out" in happiness, he said.
"When that song popped on I said, 'Let me do my thing,' " he said.
That dance led to a marriage that her husband said would have celebrated its 19th anniversary in September.
But Janet Cummings' life was cut short over the weekend, three days after she sustained injuries in a four-vehicle crash Wednesday, said Master Sgt. S. Nowak of the Illinois State Police District in Chicago.
Her husband described the mother of three as a carefree woman who loved her family, life and everything about it.
"You could keep going with post adjectives all day long," he said. "She was taken from us too soon."
The crash occurred at Route 53 in the northbound lanes, 200 feet south of the Northwest Tollway, Nowak said.
Janet Cummings was heading home from Itasca, where she worked as an accountant, her husband said.
According to Nowak, Cummings' 2003 Saturn Ion was stopped in traffic at 3:26 p.m., when a tractor-trailer rear-ended her on the passenger side of her bumper, sending her vehicle spinning counterclockwise and smashing, passenger-side first, into another tractor-trailer in front of her.
The first truck's impact with Cummings sent it off the road and when it attempted to right itself, it struck a fourth car, Nowak said.
Cummings was being treated at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. She died Saturday from head trauma, Nowak said.
The driver was cited at the scene for driving without insurance and for driving too fast for the conditions.
A funeral Mass will be held Tuesday at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Crystal Lake.
Burial will follow at St. Michael the Archangel Cemetery in Palatine.
Survivors include her husband Doug, their three daughters Nicole, Kelli and Rebecca, and her mother Lorelei Lucarelli.