Miyuki Cannon usually drove her car to Pontiac to visit her brother in prison.
But Friday she decided to take a ride in the Salvation Army’s van. And at the last minute, she decided to make the trip alone, without her mother or her 20-month-old daughter, Miyeko, who were dressed up and ready to go.
Saturday, 72-year-old Kazue Cannon was mourning her daughter’s death, and Miyeko was sitting on an aunt’s lap asking for “Mama.”
Cannon, a 34-year-old Chicago woman who was ready to launch a career in cosmetology, was one of 10 people who died Friday morning in a wreck on a snowy stretch of Interstate Highway 55 just south of I-80 near Joliet. The van she was riding in was headed for prison visits in Downstate Pontiac and Dwight when it spun out of control and slammed into an oncoming semi-tractor trailer in one of Illinois’ worst traffic accidents.
One 24-year-old Chicago woman survived and was in critical condition in the intensive care unit Saturday in Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
The Will County coroner’s office released a list of the victims Saturday afternoon. They included seven women and three men, all from Chicago. They were Betty J. Allen, 38; Terria T. Harrell, 23; Rosie L. Harris, 53; Jill Henry, 49; LaTanya P. Jackson, 16; Rev. Ralph J. Johnson, 73; Garneal T. Matthews, 44; Tongula M. Overstreet, 30; Juan A. Ramos, 74; and Cannon.
“This is rough,” Cannon’s father, Vernon Cannon, said as his granddaughter played in his lap with a plastic bottle.
Miyuki Cannon and her mother went to visit her brother often, family members said.
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“We’re shocked,” said Cannon’s sister, Vickie Hill, 41, as she sat in her parents’ apartment in the 8100 block of South Throop Street. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, but we’re having our moments where all we’re doing is crying.”
The wreck happened about 9:48 a.m. Friday as the Salvation Army van was making its regular Wednesday through Sunday run to Dwight and Pontiac. Matthews, a Salvation Army employee, was driving when the 15-passenger Dodge van went out of control.
Investigators and Illinois State Police accident reconstruction specialists were examining the vehicles Saturday, trying to figure out why the southbound van slid into the northbound lanes. Truck driver Nicholas LaLuna was unable to avoid slamming into the van broadside.
Snow and wind that caused the roads to ice up Friday morning were the likely culprits, but investigators said they would conduct a thorough investigation before drawing any conclusions.
LaLuna, who was treated at a Joliet hospital and released Friday, could not be reached for comment. A neighbor in rural Kankakee County, Dave Walton, said LaLuna was upset when he spoke to him Friday night.
“I know he’s going through a difficult time,” Walton said. “He said he’d never forget that picture he saw after the collision. He said, `I just wish I’d been knocked unconscious myself.'”
The surviving van passenger, Shawanda L. Cross, was transferred late Friday to Loyola University Medical Center from Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Joliet. The single mother of a 2-year-old girl underwent surgery at both hospitals.
Known to loved ones as “Cherry,” Cross is a student at Chicago State University, her family said, and was expecting to graduate in 2002 with a degree in child development. She was on her way to Pontiac to visit an old friend.
On Saturday afternoon, her family huddled in the intensive care unit at Loyola waiting and praying for signs of recovery. Her grandmother, Bertha Waters, was staking her hopes on Cross’ will to survive for her daughter’s sake.
“There must have been a reason for God letting her stay here,” Waters said. “She made it this far, I guess she had the will to live. She wouldn’t leave that little girl for anything.”
Cross’ foot was severed above the ankle in the wreck, and she suffered a broken pelvis and other severe internal injuries. While Cross’ family was holding onto hope Saturday, 10 other families were facing the worst.
On Chicago’s West Side, relatives of Juan Angel Ramos, who include 13 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren, were grieving the loss of their family’s patriarch.
At 7:15 a.m. Friday, Ramos said goodbye to his wife, Luz, who was lying in bed but awake, granddaughter Ramona Anaiel said.
“He went in the room, kissed her . . . then he left,” Anaiel said. He often visited his grandsons, who were in prison for gang-related convictions, she said.
“Poppy was mainly the support of everybody, he was the head of everybody,” she said, speaking Saturday at her grandfather’s home in the 900 block of North Lavergne Avenue.
Luz Ramos spoke Friday night with the two grandsons in prison, who were allowed an emergency phone call after being told the news.
The driver of the van, Matthews, was remembered Saturday for his devotion to prison ministry.
“I wish I had his spirit,” Salvation Army administrator Jim Bracey said of his colleague. “He would run down the hall shouting, `Hallelujah!’ and quoting scripture.”
Rev. Leonard Roy Harris of Grove Heights Baptist Church, 9800 S. Greenwood Ave., and a chaplain for the Salvation Army, said Matthews, a stocky man with an ear-to-ear grin, was a good friend and a deacon at the church.
“Garneal represented many black men who had come through drugs, crime and prison and had overcome it,” Harris said. “He committed himself to helping those who were touched by drugs, poverty and family breakdown. He did it through Christ.”
Once an inmate himself, Matthews had turned his life around and was setting an example in his community. He reached out to teenagers near his home in the 9600 block of South Avalon Avenue, including Victor Boyd, 17, who lives across the street.
“We used to go over there [to Matthews’ house] and lift weights and run on the treadmill,” Boyd said. “He tried to work with the young men around here.”
A steady stream of friends and family were offering support to Matthews’ wife, Kainga, 40, an operator at the Chicago police 911 center; and two daughters, Garnesha, 11, and Cilicia, who turned 14 Saturday.
Rosie L. Harris died in the crash with her granddaughter, LaTanya P. Jackson. The pair were in the van en route to Pontiac to visit Harris’ son, an uncle to Jackson, family members said.
It would have been Jackson’s first visit to the prison.
Rosie Harris had recently worked at Brach’s as a chocolate packer and was the matriarch of a family that included six children and 20 grandchildren.
Jackson was known by the letters KO, for knockout, because of her good looks, said Harris’ daughter, Jacqueline Johnson-Hale. She was a sophomore at Taft High School.
Like Matthews, Rev. Ralph Johnson was involved in prison ministry. A retired Chicago Transit Authority worker who was an electrician and locksmith by trade, he was active in a church and a halfway house for inmates, both on the South Side, said a friend who asked not to be identified.
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Tanya Harrell, mother of Terria Harrell, said she and other family members had to break the news to Terria’s daughter Friday night.
“She cried and we just told her that we were going to be with her,” she said.
Terria Harrell went to Pontiac to visit a friend about twice a month, her brother Reubyn Bowles said.
Bowles said his sister was a Phillips High School graduate who worked nights at the United Parcel Service distribution center in Hodgkins.
Salvation Army officials, who were mourning the loss of Matthews, found themselves in the difficult position of being victims of the crash at the same time they were rushing to give aid.
“There’s a unique feeling of coming at it from both angles,” said Pat McPherson, disaster services director for the Metro Division of the Salvation Army. “It’s a feeling of more urgency–these were people that we cared about and cared for.”