Schaumburg pays $10M settlement for Septemberfest worker fatally hit by car in 2022

Schaumburg trustees have approved a $10 million settlement with the family of a Hanover Park man who died after being hit by a wrong-way driver while working at Septemberfest in 2022.

Michael Parr was 58 at the time and working for a private security firm at the annual festival.

Parr’s family filed lawsuits against the village and the driver a year later. The case against the village was scheduled for trial late last year, but halted as settlement negotiations continued, Assistant Village Attorney Howard Jablecki said.

The settlement is covered by the village’s liability insurance, Jablecki noted.

Jablecki had gone to work for the security firm despite having two prosthetic legs from separate amputations. Family members said he needed to return to the workforce after his wife Janet, who was the family’s primary breadwinner at the time, was diagnosed with early onset dementia.

Their daughter Dani had just graduated from Syracuse University earlier that year and was seeking a career in sports management at the time of the accident. She is now the administrator of her father’s estate and was the plaintiff in the lawsuit.

According to Schaumburg police, Michael Parr was struck by a sedan traveling the wrong direction on a temporarily one-way street at 10:38 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 3 at the intersection of Summit Drive and New Mills Court. The car was driven by then-25-year-old James E. Tokarz of Elk Grove Village.

Tokarz, who was cited for having caused the accident, did stop after the crash to deliver aid, police said.

Family members said Parr suffered paralysis from the shoulders down, multiple broken ribs, two broken shoulders and facial fractures, and was unable to breathe on his own. An MRI showed he'd suffered multiple strokes in the wake of his injuries also.

With his condition continuing to deteriorate, and the prognosis for recovery declining, family members decided to remove him from life support in late September. He died an hour and a half later.

Though Parr lost one leg to an infection in 2009 and the other to diabetes in 2018, the kidney dialysis he began in 2019 brought him to the best level of health his daughter Dani said she’d ever seen in him. Even with his prosthetic legs, he would help his neighbors with cutting the grass and other chores.

“He loved it,” Dani said shortly after her father was injured in 2022. “He was fiercely independent.”

The family’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.