A decade ago, when Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird was Oswego Police Chief, he was awoken by a call about a drunken driving crash that killed five teenagers, injured several others and ultimately landed the driver, a young mother, in prison.
Baird thought of his own teenage son, home with friends sleeping over. But immediately after hanging up with a promise he would be on his way, he ran to his son’s room.
To the chief’s relief, his son and buddies were still there, playing video games.
“They were in the room but I got to tell you, I questioned it, that maybe my son snuck out because I was asleep,” Baird said.
Baird and Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis on Monday spoke with reporters about the crash, 10 years ago on Feb. 11, that shook the village of Oswego and scared parents who realized how often they didn’t know where their kids were or what they were doing.
Judge Clint Hull in 2010 sentenced then 26-year-old Sandra Vasquez to 15 years in prison after jurors convicted her of aggravated drunken driving and reckless homicide for driving drunk during the early morning hours of Feb. 11, 2007, when she crashed her sedan into a utility pole, killing five Oswego teenagers she was driving home from an underage drinking party, according to Beacon-News archives.
Vasquez had gone to a home to pick up her younger sister and offered an intoxicated teen a ride, according to published coverage of the case. Matthew Frank, 17, and Katherine Merkel, 14, sat in the front. Four other teens took the back seat, and Jessica Nutoni, 15, and Tiffany Urso, 16, climbed on top of them. Frank, Merkel, Nutoni and Urso died instantly. James McGee, 16, a passenger in the back, died later. Vasquez and three other passengers were also seriously injured.
To remember the five killed, the state’s attorney’s office installed a frame Monday featuring photos of each, along with a larger image of the crash. There is a date — Feb. 11, 2007 — but no names, an intentional choice, they said.
Weis said he chose not to contact their families about the remembrance project, not wishing to drudge up something they didn’t want. But he wanted to acknowledge the tragedy in a lasting way.
“(It’s) not to say one victim is more important than the other, but it’s important to remember,” Weis said.
The case had a widespread impact on the Oswego area, and Weis and Baird were no bystanders.
Baird recalled going out to the scene and figuring out how to handle not only the deceased, but also multiple victims that were still alive, going to various locations. It taxed the small department’s resources. Ten years may have gone by quickly, but the technology the department had then is far from what it is today, and it was harder to keep track of people, he said.
Complicating matters was the young ages of the victims, who didn’t all have driver’s licenses or carry other forms of identification, he said.
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While police took Polaroids of the deceased to help the coroner’s office, looking back, they probably should have taken photos of the surviving teens before they went off to the hospital too, for identification purposes, Baird said.
“But you’re thinking so quickly,” Baird said. “To get them life-flighted out … that’s the priority.”
Baird had coached one of the injured teens, Bobby Larsen in East tackle football a few years before the crash and known Larson’s father for a long time, so he was almost sure Larsen was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, but he wasn’t positive.
He went to the Larsens’ house, woke the family up and told the father the situation.
“He thought his son was in bed,” Baird said. “He looks at me and he goes, ‘Dwight, let me get this straight. You want me to drive to Downers Grove because you think my son is there?’ and I said yes. I said, ‘I know that’s a lot to ask. But you don’t know where he is. I – we think it’s him.'”
A trip to the hospital confirmed it was Bobby, but Baird can’t forget the experience of telling someone he knew he didn’t know where his child was.
“That always comes to me, that night,” Baird said. “You’re kind of making a notification but you’re unsure … Growing up in a town like Eric (Weis) and I have, it’s a blessing to know people in situations like that, but sometimes it can be a curse.”
While the crash altered many lives throughout the Oswego area, its impact is hard to measure, Weis said.
“If it stopped one person from getting behind the wheel, we never know about it,” Weis said.
The entire community had a strong reaction to the loss of five young lives, the officials said. At the time, everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone involved. Now it’s still a lesson Weis brings up when he visits high schools, he said.
Weis remembers becoming emotionally drained as the court case wore on.
A lot of people made a lot of bad choices, and a lot of bad things had to happen for the devastation to occur, but what happened wasn’t isolated to one person’s decision — that was one thing everyone could agree about, Weis said.
It’s easier to do a prosecutor’s job when someone harmed another with intent, Weis said.
“By the time you’re done, I just wanted to go home and see my family and tell them I love them,” Weis said.
Twitter @hannahmleone