Police: Texting teen crashes car into garage

A 16-year-old girl has been cited for texting while driving, an act police say made her crash a Lexus into a Crystal Lake garage over the weekend.

The Crystal Lake teenager was driving her parents' 1998 Lexus ES300 east on Country Club Road Sunday afternoon when it left the road at a curve and traveled across a lawn before hitting the garage attached to a house, police said.

The teenager and the lone person at home were not injured, but the car and garage sustained “several thousand dollars” in damage, Deputy Police Chief Eugene Lowery said.

At 1:01 p.m., police and the fire department responded to the 800 block of Wedgewood Drive the scene of the crash.

Police said they later determined the girl, the car's sole occupant, had been using a mobile phone to send and receive text messages just before the crash.

Lowery said the girl also admitted to police she was texting while driving.

The teenager was issued tickets for failure to reduce speed to avoid a crash and for improper use of an electronic communication device.

She was released to a parent, pending prosecution.