Former Crystal Lake girl dies in Wisconsin crash

A former Crystal Lake resident and her friend were killed Wednesday night in a single-car accident in Kenosha County, Wis., that put a third friend in the hospital.

Denise Dooley, 18, lost control of her friend's Volkswagen Jetta a little after 7 p.m. Wednesday on a rural stretch of road in the Town of Brighton, said Kenosha County Sheriff's Sgt. Gil Benn.

Dooley lost control, crossed the center line and veered into a ditch, where the car rolled over.

Neither Dooley nor front seat passenger Alivia Manon, also 18, were wearing seat belts, Benn said. Both were ejected from the car and found dead at the scene.

Back seat passenger Tanya Nitschneider, 18, was wearing her seat belt. She was taken to a hospital with nonlife threatening injuries.

News footage from WTMJ 4, a Milwaukee TV station, show a long set of skid marks crossing from one lane of traffic to the other on the two-lane country road.

Police are still investigating the crash but believe speed was a factor.

Dooley lived in Crystal Lake from the time she was born until she was 8 years old, before moving north to Harvard and then Kenosha County. She returned to Crystal Lake for a year to live with her father, Pat Dooley, and spent her junior year in high school at Crystal Lake South.

"When she walked into the room she made it light up," said Pam Taylor, who with her own children lived as a family with the Dooleys during Denise's childhood. "She always had a smile on her face. She was friendly to everyone."

"I'd just left the house this morning when I got the phone call. I turned right around and told Dan, Jenna and Tina. The kids were always close. They loved her like she was their own sister. They were preschoolers together."

Telling her 11-year-old, Amanda, who was Denise's sister, will be painful, Taylor said Thursday morning.

What gnaws at Taylor was that the crash could have had a very different result.

"If you look at the video, the frame of the car is still intact," Taylor said. "If they were wearing their seat belts, they would have lived. It's just that simple."

Taylor has always preached to her kids about the importance of seat belts. "My mom started us wearing our seat belts in 1968 when it wasn't cool," she said. "Now I couldn't back down the driveway without one; I'd feel unsafe."