August 2011 Archives

LaToya Williams, her son Derrick Young, and family friend Jermaine Garner died in a tragic car accident on the Bishop Ford Freeway over the weekend.

On Sunday morning, Young was driving Garner home to Calumet City in the family Chevrolet Cavalier, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. While driving down the highway, the car apparently lost power and stopped in the middle lane of the highway. An SUV did not see the stopped car in time and rear-ended the vehicle. Williams, Young, and Garner were all killed.

In what's proving to be a pretty dangerous route, there was an Amtrak train derailment on the Chicago to San Francisco line. The train was carrying 175 passengers, and several people were reportedly injured and taken to hospitals. No deaths were reported.

The Amtrak train originating in California was speeding towards Chicago when it struck some equipment on the tracks and derailed, reports the Chicago Tribune. The accident occurred close to Benkelman, Nebraska, near the Kansas and Colorado borders.

Car accidents happen all the time. Someone in a Porsche can be flinging bills out the window and coming straight at you. Or you may be a motorcyclist in the path of an unaware driver. Would you know what to do if you were driving and hit another vehicle or were hit by another driver?

Below is a list of things that should be done, if at all possible, when any automobile accident occurs.

In a lawsuit filed in Cook County, a woman sued Premier Care in Bathing after she was stuck in one of the company’s bathtubs for 30 hours. Anne Cullen, of Western Illinois, says that she became wedged in the company’s walk-in tubs and needed to be saved by her daughter over a day later.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Cullen paid $12,000 for the bathtub which she only ended up using twice. Cullen claims that in September 2010, she stepped into the tub and as it was filling with water she somehow became wedged in the front of the tub.

A Chicago woman, Christina Santiago, was killed when a blast of wind knocked over a stage at the Indiana State Fair. Santiago was one of five people killed among the dozens injured due to the Indiana State Fair stage collapse.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the 29-year old Santiago was an advocate for gay and lesbian rights in Chicago and was just recently joined in a civil union. Santiago's partner was also injured in the collapse, but she is expected to survive.

Demonstrating that not even the smallest of consumer wrongs will escape her attention, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued a Springfield man accused of contractor fraud for promised lawn care services.

According to her press release, John Wease scammed lawn care customers of more than $8,000 for lawn care services he never provided. Since January 2010, it’s alleged that Wease went door-to-door soliciting customers by offering them a free quote for his services. If the customers agreed, Wease required an upfront fee for the lawn care. But Madigan claims that Wease would rarely ever follow through and in some cases never even started the work. Instead, Madigan says that Wease pocketed the money.

Football players are accustomed to getting injured. They throw their bodies around at full speed and get struck by 300-pound men. The dangers are a part of the game and something players expect. So what could have been so dangerous as to shut down an eagerly anticipated Bears Family Fest practice -- just days after the NFL lockout ended?

The Soldier Field turf itself. Coach Lovie Smith and General Manager Jerry Angelo took a look at the Soldier Field turf and deemed it unsafe. As a result, the team canceled the Family Fest practice and refunded fans their money.

Car accident liability can sometimes be hard to prove. That's because there's a lot of moving parts and the negligence of another driver may have caused an accident involving more than one vehicle. However, the recent I-88 accident involving a Porsche going the wrong way on the highway might not leave too much confusion over who was liable.

According to the Chicago Tribune, a 43-year-old Naperville man was driving down I-88 in a late-model Porsche when he began to throw cash out of the car's window. Multiple witnesses said they saw the man driving slowly while apparently rifling through the passenger side of his Porsche, before he began to toss money out of his car.

In the latest Illinois recall, the Agricultural Department and Minnesota meat-manufacturer Cargill announced a recall of 36 million pounds of Cargill turkey after one person was killed and dozens injured from eating the company’s ground turkey.

According to the Associated Press, Cargill is recalling fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company’s Springdale, Arkansas, plant from February 20 through August 2, due to concerns that the meat was tainted with salmonella. The recall is one of the largest ever and was announced after a person in California died and 76 people nationwide became ill after eating the meat.

Is there nothing safe left to eat? One week after Mexican papayas were recalled, it is being reported that a person apparently died of salmonella food poisoning after eating ground turkey.

According to the Chicago Tribune, federal officials are investigating the incident and have not yet issued a recall (unlike with the papayas), but ground turkey salmonella food poisoning appears to have caused the death as well as several illnesses nationwide.

Seventy-six people in 26 states have become ill with the same strain of salmonella; including, several cases in Illinois, reports the Tribune. The CDC has not identified the person who died nor has the agency released any information relating to the source of the ground turkey.