Friends raise funeral money as police continue search for answers
Prospect Heights police are talking today with the lone survivor of an early morning crash Saturday that killed three Northwest suburban teens riding in a car that was reported stolen.
Daniel Ascencio was released Sunday from Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge after receiving treatment for injuries suffered in the horrific crash outside a Prospect Heights home.
“He is able to talk,” Prospect Heights Police Chief Jamie Dunne said Monday morning. “Right now he is talking to us.”
Mount Prospect police are also investigating the crash.
Killed in the crash were Freddy Najera, 16, of Mount Prospect; Jessica Ferrer, 15, of Arlington Heights; and Elibeth Solis, 16, of Park Ridge.
Dunne said investigators are continuing to reconstruct the circumstances of the crash as well as delving into how the four teens came to be in the stolen vehicle at 3 a.m.
As police search for those answers, friends and neighbors of the teens gathered in Najera's Boxwood neighborhood in Mount Prospect Monday for a car wash to raise funds for his funeral. A candy sale Sunday raised more than $750 for funeral costs.
Mount Prospect police Cmdr. John Wagner said there is no known connection between the stolen vehicle's and the four teens. The owner, who lives on the 700 block of North Eastman Drive in Mount Prospect, told police he may have left the keys in the 2002 Honda Accord after unloading groceries Friday night.
He didn't notice the vehicle missing and report it until 8:20 a.m. Saturday morning, Wagner said. It didn't take long after that to realize that the stolen vehicle was the one involved in the fatal crash five hours earlier.
Reports indicated Solis was driving the Accord when it swerved off the roadway in the 100 block of Camp McDonald Road, just across from the city's police station, and slammed into two trees. Solis, Najera and Ferrer were all thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene.
Ascencio was the front seat passenger, and the only person in the car wearing a seat belt.
Ferrer and Solis were students Prospect High School, said Venetia Miles, Director of Community Relations for Northwest Suburban High School District 214. Both girls had transferred to Prospect from John Hersey High School, where Najera was a student.
Ascencio also attends Hersey, Miles said.