Chicago boy, 4, dies when car crashes into IDOT truck

SOUTH HOLLAND, Ill. (AP) - A 4-year-old Chicago boy died when a car rear-ended an Illinois Department of Transportation help truck along a freeway and caught fire in a Chicago suburb, state police said.

The boy, identified as William Collier by the Cook County medical examiner's office, died at the scene of Wednesday morning's crash on the Bishop Ford Expressway, Illinois State Police said Thursday.

The medical examiner's office said the boy died of multiple head injuries following the crash in the Cook County village of South Holland. He was a passenger in a car driven by a 27-year-old Chicago man, who was hospitalized with serious injuries, state police said.

Two IDOT trucks had stopped with their emergency lights activated for an abandoned vehicle when the Chicago man's sedan was unable to come to a stop and slammed into the rear end of one of the IDOT trucks, and the sedan became fully engulfed in flames, police said.

The driver of the IDOT truck, a 59-year-old Schaumburg man, was taken to a hospital with injuries that weren't life-threatening.

The crash closed all northbound lanes of the freeway for nearly four hours.