Signs on the wire fence around Hi Speed Race Karts in Palatine say “Ride at your own risk” and “Management not responsible for injury to person or property.”
Lindsay and Denny Kukich Jr. have learned the hard truth of those warnings in the weeks since their daughter, Shelby, 3, was crushed to death in an accident at the track. They are left to wonder how much to blame themselves, the track’s owners, or even the state for allowing the facility to operate.
But the state’s limited regulatory process and the track’s elusive owners still make some of those questions difficult to answer.
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Lindsay Kukich said she had never been to the go-cart track before the June 30 accident and did not see a posted sign saying riders had to be 5 feet tall. A worker waved her along when she asked if Shelby could ride, she said, adding that she did not know state law allows only one rider per vehicle.
The girl was crushed between her mother and the steering wheel when their cart and another one collided, Palatine police said.
State officials said the Palatine track, and others under the same ownership, had a history of problems: safety violations, a tangled web of ownership, numerous unreported injuries, uncertainty over insurance coverage. A state agency had even closed the tracks, alleging safety lapses, and another had spent a year trying to identify the owners and hold them responsible for a lack of workers’ compensation insurance, state officials said. But the track received a permit without a hitch this spring.
State regulators have since closed it, and they said they are seeking a criminal prosecution in connection with Shelby’s death. But two other suburban Chicago tracks under the same ownership still have permission to operate.
“How could [someone] run an operation like this and the State of Illinois allow him to?” Denny Kukich asked. “I want answers, and I believe I’m entitled to those answers.”
So do some state legislators. House Consumer Protection Committee chairman John Fritchey (D-Chicago), predicts the laws governing go-cart tracks may be revised in the wake of Shelby’s death.
“Our role is to make absolutely sure that we have laws on the books that don’t just sound like the right laws, but actually make things safer for the people of the State of Illinois,” he said.
The lack of answers stems in part from the way the state regulates go-cart tracks. The Department of Labor annually inspects facilities and equipment and asks for proof of insurance. That’s as far as its responsibility goes, spokeswoman Anita Morley said.
But problems at five tracks under the same ownership, including Palatine, were alleged during the state Industrial Commission’s workers’ compensation investigation.
At an Industrial Commission hearing in 1998, Labor Department inspectors testified that each track had at some point been closed for safety problems, that their insurance policies often were canceled after a few months, and that the managers were often hard to find.
“They have been so much of a problem over the years,” chief inspector Carl Kimble said.
Former inspector John Rogers testified that in 12 years of inspections, he had never been able to figure out who the owners were.
But the Industrial Commission concluded that a retired Park Ridge attorney, Michael Schiessle, was behind the maze of constantly changing companies that ran Palatine and four other go-cart tracks. Those in Wheeling and Tinley Park have current permits to operate, while tracks in Melrose Park and Waukegan have closed.
The tracks have operated under at least 30 corporate names in the last 17 years. According to prosecutors, the companies–most of which were in business for only 15 months–were designed to shield the owners from potential liability associated with go-carting.
Schiessle has denied he owns the tracks and is appealing the Industrial Commission’s ruling declaring him to be the owner and record-breaking $715,000 worker’s compensation fine. He could not be reached, and one of his attorneys, Tobin Richter, declined to answer questions.
The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates injuries related to go-carting send 19,500 people a year to emergency rooms, nearly two-thirds of them under age 15. There were at least 230 deaths between 1985 and 1996, a commission study found.
Records from the 1998 Industrial Commission hearing detail numerous injuries reported by patrons and employees of the five tracks who said they could not pin down owners or managers.
After Shelby’s death, the company now running the tracks–Opussum Grape Inc. of Arkansas–sent the Labor Department a brief letter notifying it of her death. But officials have not been able to contact anyone from the company in person, Morley said.
The mailbox that serves as Opussum Grape’s business address is outside a weed-covered water slide in Mountain Home, Ark. Local residents said it has been closed for at least three years.
Another amusement park in that town, Fun Mountain–whose address was used by companies connected to the Illinois go-cart tracks as recently as last year–was closed by the Arkansas Department of Labor in 1996 after an accident in which two children were injured, said agency spokeswoman Denise Oxley. The park had not been inspected and did not have insurance, Oxley said.
From Arkansas, the trail leads to a Vernon Hills post-office box, where the water slide’s property-tax bills are sent to C. Emotin. The name appears among Schiessle’s network of associates, and the address traces to his nephew Michael Pelfresne, said Robert Harris, an Industrial Commission lawyer who helped build the case. Neither Pelfresne nor Emotin could be found.
Then the trail veers to Kenosha and Happy Homers Inc., which took out the most recent insurance policy for the Opussum Grape tracks, Labor Department officials said. Its office is a postal box at a Mail Boxes Etc., and calls to an answering machine were not returned.
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The Kukiches’ lawyer, Tim Tomasik of Clifford Law Offices, said owners of amusement businesses bear a greater responsibility for safety than do their patrons, both because the owners are more familiar with the equipment and because they profit from it.
“The rest of our lives, we’re going to have to go on without her. And [the owner] can’t even write a letter saying he’s sorry,” Kukich said.