An Elgin father of three died Wednesday in the third crash in less than 15 hours at an intersection long identified as one of the suburb’s most dangerous, authorities said.
Elgin police hope to find the driver of a red dump truck that witnesses said turned left in front of a pickup, causing the driver to swerve into the path of Luis Ramirez’s car.
Ramirez, 54, died at the scene near Lake Street and Shales Parkway. The intersection has been a trouble spot for years and is scheduled for a $3.4 million overhaul by the state Department of Transportation next year, in part because of safety concerns, officials said.
In Wednesday’s fatal crash, a Ford pickup pulling a horse trailer and driven by Susan Jayne, 49, of Elgin was driving east about 6 a.m. on Lake Street, which is also U.S. Highway 20. The dump truck turned left in front of her from Lake Street to head south on Bluff City Boulevard, according to a police statement.
Jayne swerved to avoid the truck and collided head-on with the 1998 Dodge Neon that Ramirez was driving west on Lake, killing him, police said.
Jayne suffered a minor leg injury and declined medical attention, according to police. The horse in her trailer was uninjured.
Hours after the accident, Ramirez’s family gathered on the front steps of their home in the 300 block of Fulton Street.
“He was always great with the grandkids, and sometimes he’d get out and play soccer with them,” said daughter Eva Ramirez.
Eva Ramirez, 24, said her father traveled Lake Street thousands of times, heading to his job as a mechanic at Electri-Flex Co. in Roselle, where he worked the overnight shift. He worked for the company for about 18 years, relatives said.
Luis Ramirez had another daughter Stephanie, 14, and a son, Jose Luis, 31; he also had six grandchildren between 1 and 6, Eva Ramirez said.
The crash Wednesday added to the list of people injured or killed at that intersection over the years. Officials didn’t have exact figures on fatalities, but a check of news reports showed at least two deaths near the intersection in the last decade.
A year ago, a four-car crash there left a 16-year-old girl in critical condition after the car she was driving collided with another vehicle that turned left in front of her on Lake Street.
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The early-morning crash was the third accident at the intersection since roughly 3 p.m. Tuesday; no one was injured in the other two crashes, according to police reports.
Since at least 2001, the intersection has ranked among the 10 most active in the city for crashes and traffic citations, said Elgin Police Lt. Tom O’Herron. A combination of hills, high speeds, heavy traffic and glaring sunlight in drivers’ eyes all have contributed to the unsafe conditions, O’Herron said.
“It’s definitely one of the worst, if not the worst, intersections in Elgin,” he said.
Illinois Department of Transportation officials five years ago asked Elgin to have $35,000 available for local matching money to allow a safety upgrade of the intersection to move forward, said Elgin spokeswoman Susan Olafson.
“They are aware of the accident history there,” Olafson said.
The $3.4 million improvement project is scheduled to be put out to bid next spring, after a bridge renovation project on Lake just east of Shales gets under way, said IDOT spokeswoman Marisa Kollias. Details of the planned intersection improvements were not available Wednesday.
Ed Ufland, the retired head of Elgin’s police traffic unit, said the intersection has been notorious since well before he retired about five years ago.
A decade ago, he said, police “[parked] a squad car there and kept its lights flashing just to slow down traffic.”
Anyone with information on the dump truck is asked to call police at 847-289-2660.
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