A 69-year-old woman is dead after a two-car collision in Highland Tuesday night.
Highland Police responded around 9:37 p.m. Sept. 9 to the intersection of Kennedy Avenue and Hart Road for a personal-injury accident, Highland Police spokesman Cmdr. John Banasiak said in a release Wednesday. There, they found both a severely damaged 2020 Dodge Durango and a 2021 Jeep with debris scattered over Kennedy just north of Hart, Banasiak said.
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The preliminary investigation shows that the 69-year-old Highland woman was driving the Jeep alone in the southbound inner lane of Kennedy as a 43-year-old East Chicago woman with four other passengers — including a 14-year-old East Chicago girl — was driving a Dodge Durango north in the inner lane, Banasiak said. For reasons yet unclear, the Jeep veered left into the Durango’s lane and hit it head-on, he said.
The driver of the Jeep was airlifted to a Chicago area hospital where she died from her injuries, Banasiak said.
The 14-year-old was airlifted to Comer Children’s Hospital in Chicago with severe injuries and she is currently hospitalized; the other passengers were either taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries or tended to by medics at the scene, Banasiak said.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has not released the names of the deceased yet.
Highland Police called in the South Lake County Crash Reconstruction Team to conduct the investigation, he said. That investigation is ongoing.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.