Hazel Crest police said an investigation is ongoing into a crash Tuesday night in which two 19-year-olds were killed after the vehicle they were in split in half after hitting a sign.
The crash happened shortly after 10 p.m. in the 17000 block of Dixie Highway and the vehicle’s three occupants had initially been involved in a “disturbance” in Harvey, which police in that city responded to, according to a news release from Hazel Crest.
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Police said the vehicle was traveling south on Dixie Highway from 159th Street at a high rate of speed, veered to avoid hitting another vehicle as it was crossing the intersection, and hit a sign outside a business on the east side of Dixie Highway.
Elexis Dampier, of the 3400 block of Maple Lane in Hazel Crest, and Justin Alston, of the 16300 block of Mozart Avenue in Markham, were killed in the crash, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Dampier was pronounced dead at the scene just before 10:30 p.m. Tuesday while Alston was pronounced dead just before 11 p.m. at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the medical examiner’s office, which ruled their deaths as accidental.
A third person who was in the vehicle remained hospitalized as of Thursday.
Harvey police received a 911 call shortly after 10 p.m. from an employee of a gas station at 159th and Dixie Highway in which a young woman displayed a firearm and vandalized the store, said Glenn Harston, a Harvey spokesman.
He said the woman became upset after a payment card transaction failed to process.
He said the woman did not brandish the firearm but lifted the jacket she was wearing to show she had a gun, he said. He said that, citing information from Harvey police, two women and a man were in the vehicle, which fled the gas station after a Harvey officer arrived.
He said two people ran out of the gas station as the Harvey officer arrived, with the station employee running behind them.
The Harvey officer followed the vehicle the three were in, which traveled at a high speed down Dixie, Harston said. He said the officer was not close behind the fleeing vehicle and that the officer “stayed within (department) policy and procedure as far as engaging that car.”