A 29-year-old Manteno man convicted of causing a three-car crash in rural Monee that killed a Beecher man and injured the man’s wife in January 2024 was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the Will County state’s attorney’s office.
Myles J. Swets of the 200 block of Walnut Street, pleaded guilty to aggravated driving under the influence/fatal crash last week before Associate Judge Arkadiusz Smigielski, online court records show.
Matthew B. Eisele, 39, and his wife, Heidi, had stopped in their car the morning of Jan. 15 on the side of West Pauling Road about a mile east of Route 50 to help his step-daughter and another person whose car had a flat tire, Will County sheriff’s police said. Eisele had placed reflective placards behind his vehicle, police said.
The Eiseles returned to their car on the shoulder to warm up and await a necessary tool as Swets, on probation after pleading guilty to possessing a controlled substance, was driving west at about 9:30 a.m., going 62 mph in a 40-mph zone, prosecutors said. He went off the road onto the shoulder, hitting the Eiseles’ parked car with enough force to send it into the other parked car and then into a field, police said.
Monee Fire Protection District officials extricated Eisele from his vehicle and took him to Olympia Fields Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:25 a.m. Heidi Eisele was taken to Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest with cuts and back pain. The occupants of the other car were uninjured and refused medical treatment.
“This case is a tragic reminder of the consequences of impaired driving,” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said in a statement. “Getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated is a choice that endangers the driver’s life and the life of everyone on the roadway. It is unacceptable.”
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Swets will have to serve 85% of the 10-year sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections before being eligible for two years parole. He will receive credit for 744 days served in the Will County jail.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.