Off-Duty Paramedic Responds to Ill. Crash

ELGIN, Ill. — One person was killed and six seriously injured in a crash early Friday on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, authorities said.

Elgin firefighters responded to a rollover crash involving a limousine around 7:15 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of I-90, just west of Route 25, Assistant Chief Dave Schmidt of the Elgin Fire Department said.

“There are serious injuries,” Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Steve LeGrand said. The driver and six passengers were taken to hospitals, he said.

Firefighters found two people inside the limo and had to extricate them, Schmidt said. The others were found outside the vehicle, he said. The person who died was in the back seat, he said. Of the seven people, four were men and three were women, and they appeared to be in their 40s and 50s, he said.

Six people were taken to Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin and one was taken to St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, Schmidt said. Three were reported in critical condition and three were in serious condition, he said.

Schmidt said he did not know what caused the crash but that it happened in an area where the highway returns to three lanes. There is a median barrier.

Off-duty Streamwood firefighter and paramedic Chris Tierney was driving east on I-90 when he saw the limo about four to five cars ahead crash into a construction median head-on and flip over, landing on its roof in a closed-off lane.

“It was alarming. It looked violent,” Tierney said. “It was definitely a violent crash.”

He ran from his pickup truck to find the overturned vehicle’s engine on fire, then yelled at a construction worker at the scene to get a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. The driver exited the limo, Tierney said, and screamed that there were people in the back.

Tierney said he then grabbed a hammer from his truck and began breaking the limo’s tinted windows, trying to reach multiple victims inside.

“They don’t shatter instantly,” he said. “They kind of spider-web … so I had to hit it many times to clear the glass out.”

He said he grabbed the victim closest to him — a man who was conscious but not alert — and with the help of another bystander dragged him about 20 yards from the limo.

“He was the first person I was able to physically touch,” Tierney said.

He returned to the limo, the seats all ripped up and glass and debris lining the upside-down roof, and found two women — one unconscious and the other conscious but unable to move because of severe leg pain.

“It was intensely chaotic,” he said. “You still have traffic traveling past you. Bystanders are starting to stop. Victims are screaming.”

By then Elgin’s firefighters and ambulance were at the scene, and Tierney said he helped them remove the unconscious woman on a backboard and began administering CPR on the side of the road. Then the first responders from Elgin took over, he said.

Tierney, 36, of Carpentersville, said he was on the scene about a half-hour to 45 minutes, part of the time giving statements to state police. He’s been a firefighter and paramedic at Streamwood since 2010 and before that worked as a part-time firefighter in Bartlett.

He said that when he returned to his truck, he grabbed his cellphone and called his wife, to hear her voice.

“The first thing I think of, even after returning from a fire or serious call while on duty, the first thing I think of is my family,” he said. “And I’ll call my wife, just to let her know I’m OK. And that they’re home safe.”

Tierney said he hasn’t been given any update on the victims.

“They’re in my thoughts and prayers,” he said.

One lane in each direction remained open as state police cleared the wreckage and investigated.

The Elgin Fire Department was assisted at the scene by units from Hoffman Estates and East Dundee. Other towns that responded but were not required at the scene were Streamwood, West Dundee and Bartlett, according to Elgin fire officials.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter. Chicago Tribune’s Rosemary Regina Sobol and Vikki Ortiz Healy contributed.

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