Circumstances of off-duty cop's deadly crash in Arlington Heights still unknown
Arlington Heights police say they don't know why an off-duty Chicago police officer was speeding before his SUV struck a utility pole and ended up in a backyard in a violent Monday morning crash that caused his death.
“We don't know where he was going or where he was coming from,” Arlington Heights Police Chief Nick Pecora said Thursday of 29-year-old Chicago cop Jose Luis Castro, whose 2021 Toyota 4Runner veered off the roadway at Wilke and Kirchoff roads just after 1 a.m. Monday.
The impact threw Castro and a 33-year-old passenger from the vehicle, which came to rest just steps from the back door of a house on the 600 block of South Reuter Drive.
The passenger, described as Castro's friend, was not cooperative when Arlington Heights officers tried to question him at Northwest Community Hospital, Pecora said.
The man was later released from the hospital and won't face any criminal charges, Pecora said.
Police said that shortly before the fatal crash, Castro sped away from a Rolling Meadows police officer who had attempted to pull him over about two miles from the crash site.
Though Castro had been living on Chicago's Northwest Side, he may have been in the Arlington Heights/Rolling Meadows area because he is from there, Pecora said.
Arrangements released Thursday include a visitation from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday at Meadows Funeral Home in Rolling Meadows and a funeral Mass at noon Tuesday at Misión San Juan Diego in Arlington Heights.
Following an autopsy Tuesday, officials at the Cook County medical examiner's office on Thursday said the manner and cause of death are still pending further investigation.
Arlington Heights police have said driver impairment is suspected, but not confirmed, and Pecora added it could take up to six weeks to get toxicology results back from the lab.
Pecora said his department's investigation into the crash is nearly complete, but investigators may still download the vehicle's black box to see exactly how fast Castro was going.
“Looking at the devastating impact on that car, the energy it took to shear a ComEd pole and catapult through three backyards, he wasn't doing 25 or 50 miles per hour,” Pecora said. “He was going a little faster than that.”