Working behind the scenes, Tinley Park Police Officer Michael O’Hearn has played a key role in charging 30 motorists with aggravated DUI and 15 with reckless homicide.
O’Hearn, lead motor vehicle crash reconstructionist with his department’s crash investigation unit since 1996, has also helped charge two people with murder and one with attempted murder.
In one case, O’Hearn developed 3D animation that helped Illinois State Police convict a Hammond man of reckless homicide in the death of a Chicago Fire Department lieutenant. The 3D animation, used for the first time in a Cook County trial, showed Lt. Scott Gillen securing a routine crash site on the Dan Ryan Expressway and the intoxicated Carlando Hurt driving into the crash site, fatally injuring the 37-year-old father of five two days before Christmas 2000.
Hurt, who was trying to get around traffic stopped for the first crash, was convicted in 2002 and is serving a 13-year sentence in the Danville Correctional Center.
A little more than seven years later, O’Hearn’s skills were brought into play for a non-traffic case — the February 2008 killings of five women at the Lane Bryant store. In addition to reconstructing and documenting the scene, O’Hearn also served as liaison officer with the family of one of the victims.
Sgt. Darren Persha said O’Hearn approached the family liaison role “with dignity and compassion.”
Like most officers, O’Hearn also has found himself in adrenaline-pumping situations, such as an attempted traffic stop on a suspect vehicle in 1998 that turned into a chase to Orland Park, where the driver and passenger abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.
The two suspects forced their way into the locked home of a young mother and her 1-year-old baby. As they attempted to restrain her, “Mike heard the young woman screaming and entered the home,” Persha said in a written report of O’Hearn’s activities. “The offenders were taken into custody with no injuries to the young woman or baby.”
Seven years earlier, O’Hearn was cited for “his quick response and interviewing methods” in a local bank robbery that resulted in the arrest of two suspects, who were also implicated in a bank robbery that had occurred the week before, Persha said.
O’Hearn, who marked his 23rd year with the department on Sept. 25, was honored as Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by Tinley Park American Legion Post No. 615 during the Sept. 18 Village Board meeting. The Legion also honored Tinley Park Fire Department Lt. Robert Reynolds as Firefighter of the Year.
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Persha, in nominating O’Hearn for the recognition, cited his “tremendous dedication and passion to his job as a police officer and accident reconstructionist.”
O’Hearn is a part-time instructor at the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety. He teaches Tinley Park police accident investigation and DUI enforcement techniques, is an in-house instructor for the Suburban Major Accident Reconstruction Team and developed a training seminar on reckless homicide and aggravated DUI for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
In 2011, O’Hearn developed a voluntary consent form used by Tinley Park police to obtain samples from motorists involved in serious or fatal crashes where substance-use is not immediately suspected.
So far, use of the forms has led to charging two motorists with aggravated DUI and reckless homicide, Persha said.
“Neither of the drivers would have been charged without obtaining blood/urine samples from the use of the consent forms,” he said.