Joliet man dead after high-speed crash into backyard in South Elgin
A Joliet man is dead after his speeding car crashed and landed in a backyard early Saturday in South Elgin, witnesses and authorities said.
The fatal crash occurred just before 2:30 a.m. on the 100 block of South Gilbert Street, according to South Elgin police and the South Elgin and Countryside Fire Protection District.
A witness who was driving north on Gilbert said the other car passed him - while going perhaps 100 mph - then failed to navigate the curve on the two-lane road and careened into a drainage ditch near railroad tracks that run parallel to the street, according to Deputy Police Chief Randy Endean.
The vehicle, a 2020 Ford Mustang GT, continued at high speeds and struck an embankment and several trees, flipping several times before landing about 30 feet up into trees in a residential backyard, Endean said.
The driver was the lone occupant of the vehicle, and there were no other injuries reported, officials said.
The Kane County Coroner's Office Saturday declined to release details about the man's identity, but police said he was a Joliet resident born in 1988. An autopsy is scheduled for Monday.
The crash awoke Beth and Rick Nicpon, who looked out their bedroom window to see the mangled sedan that came to rest on a wood pile in the corner of their yard.
"I started hearing someone calling for help," said Beth, referring to a person who was outside at the time of the crash.
At least 20 police, firefighters and paramedics were quick to arrive, she said.
"Literally as soon as we got out of the house to check on the person, the police were already coming to our house," she said. "They were very fast."
But, she says, the impact of the crash made it evident that "it was a fatal from the very beginning."
Later Saturday morning, the couple and Beth's mother Maralee Parker were thinking of the driver as they recounted what occurred hours before.
"She called me at 2:30. When you get a call from your daughter at 2:30 in the morning, it's never good news," Parker said. "We feel really bad for the family who lost someone. It was definitely a shock."
Parker and her daughter also recalled a similar crash nearly a decade ago when a car barreled through the neighbor's yard and struck the corner of that house.
The Nicpons live near where the diagonal street turns straight north and begins a steep uphill climb, and the speed limit goes from 35 mph to 25 mph.