Cary Jan was in the bedroom of his home in the 200 block of East Burlington Street just after 9 p.m. last Saturday night when he heard the sound of revving engines. Seconds later he said there was a flash of light and what sounded like an explosion.
“It sounded like a jet crashed,” said Jan, who ran outside to see what happened.
The first person Jan saw was a teenage boy, who stepped out of a mangled hunk of steel on the front lawn of the home 250 to 300 feet east of his house.
“He got out of the car like nothing happened,” Jan said of the boy, a 16-year-old Lyons resident who would be the only one to walk away from the wreck.
Then Jan noticed another pile of twisted metal in the front of his own home, next to a large tree in the middle of his front yard. No one was getting out of that section of the car.
“Help my friends, help my friends,” shouted the boy, who by this time, realized that three of his friends were trapped inside the two halves of the former 2004 Dodge Neon.
Jan and another man checked for pulses on those still in the car, but there was little they could do.
“There was nothing we could do for either of them,” Jan said. “They were encased in the metal of the car.”
The two backseat passengers, in the half of the car on Jan’s lawn, would soon be dead. Residents up and down Burlington Street flooded the Riverside Police department with calls reporting everything from an explosion to a car wreck to fireworks.
Paramedics and police arrived on the scene within minutes, and worked to extricate the boys trapped in the rear half of the car. The also worked to free the driver, a 17-year-old Lyons girl. The severely injured driver was transported to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, and was reportedly clinging to life Monday.
But 18-year-old Berwyn resident Stanley Joray and 16-year-old Lyons resident Adam Tebockhorst didn’t survive. According to a spokeswoman at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, Joray was pronounced dead at 9:51 p.m. at Loyola while Tebockhorst was pronounced dead at 9:49 p.m. at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.
Tebockhorst was a junior at Morton West High School in Berwyn. Joray graduated from Morton West last spring. The two survivors of the crash are also Morton West High School students.
According to Riverside Assistant Police Chief Thomas Weitzel, he is still waiting for an accident reconstruction report from the Cook County Sheriff’s Police, but said that according to conversations he’s had with the one survivor and others, the teens in the Dodge Neon were traveling in tandem with two more friends, a pair of teenage boys from Lyons, who were driving in a 2001 Plymouth four-door.
According to Weitzel, the friends were headed to North Riverside Park Mall and were eastbound on East Burlington Street when the driver of the Neon attempted to pass the Plymouth by speeding past it in the westbound lane of traffic.
“Whether they were drag racing or playing cat-and-mouse we’re looking into right now,” Weitzel said.
Whatever the case, the Neon was going very far in excess of the posted 25 mph speed limit. In the 200 block of Burlington Street, the Neon’s driver lost control of the car. At first caroming off the north curb, the Neon lurched to the right and hit the south curb, sending it airborne.
Weitzel said that the two cars never made contact. But the Neon flew into a mature tree in front of 251 E. Burlington St., hitting it at a height of eight feet and shearing it into two. The front half spun eastward some two or three houses east, while the rear half came to rest in Jan’s front yard.
Weitzel said police have interviewed the two boys in the Plymouth and the boy who walked away from the Neon with minor injuries. Police are hoping to interview the driver of the Neon, but have been unable to at this time. Nobody else has come forward as a witness to the crash.
Weitzel added that weather had nothing to do with the crash, since it happened before snow began falling that night. He also said that drugs or alcohol did not appear to be a contributing factor.
As word of the crash began to spread on Sunday, those who knew the crash victims began to slowly converge on Jan’s home to grieve. The first visitor, at 2 a.m. Sunday morning was the teen who walked away from the wreck. Arriving with his mother, the boy thanked Jan and his wife, Colleen Skelton-Jan for helping in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
By late Sunday night a crowd of 100 to 150 people gathered in front of the Jan home to leave mementos at the base of the tree and hold an impromptu memorial service. Riverside police were on hand to provide traffic control; the memorial lasted for about 45 minutes, breaking up around 10:45 p.m., Weitzel said.
On Monday night a smaller group of students gathered in front of the home. Monday’s gathering was held, in part, to collect money for funeral expenses for one of the boys killed in the crash. Skleton-Jan, said that the boy who survived the crash had contacted the family to make sure it was OK for friends to gather in front of the house.
“They conducted themselves in a respectful, honorable manner at our house,” Skelton-Jan said. “I saw nothing but respect, and I think the kids need to be commended for their way of coping with this.”