Driver killed after fleeing police, crashes pickup truck into Des Plaines River in Gurnee
GURNEE, Ill. (CBS) – A man was killed after crashing a pickup truck into the Des Plaines River in Gurnee Thursday evening.
Around 7:30 p.m., Lake County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to a residence in the 36500 block of North Route 41 in unincorporated Gurnee for a report of a 2016 Toyota Tacoma that was found submerged in the river.
Arriving deputies found the truck partially submerged. The driver, identified as 79-year-old Antoine Pierre from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, was also found dead inside.
An autopsy by the Lake County Coroner's Office revealed that Pierre died from blunt force injuries suffered as a result of the crash.
Investigation revealed that the residence's owner came home and found tire tracks in his yard. He followed the tire tracks to the river, where he found the truck.
It was later determined that the truck had fled from a local police department on Wednesday around 9:45 p.m., about 1.5 miles away. The truck was also called in earlier as a wrong-way driver around 3:40 a.m., in the area of Route 173 and Kilbourne Road.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office Technical Crash Investigations Team was working to determine the time and cause of the crash.
