An Illinois State trooper was hospitalized early Sunday morning after his vehicle was slammed into by a Jeep Wrangler on the Eisenhower Expressway, ABC 7 Chicago reports. The collision happened as the trooper responded to a previous accident near Mill Road in Addison, around 4:30 a.m., in conditions made hazardous by freezing temperatures and wind gusts.
The patrol officer was initially on the scene to help with a vehicle that had careened into a ditch when he saw another vehicle hit a light post and while attempting to secure the scene for safety the officer's SUV was hit by the Wrangler, according to information from Fox 32 Chicago. The crash led to the shutdown of the westbound lanes of I-290 by 4:53 a.m. and the timings of these incidents suggest a cascading effect, rooted in the treachery of the ice-slick roads.
No one else was injured in the incident, the hospitals reported the trooper's injuries as non-life-threatening. The investigations into the cause and fault of the crashes were ongoing at the time of the reports, with no further details immediately available on the status of the trooper or the Jeep driver involved in the incident.
Local authorities continued their probe into the crash circumstances, seeking to understand the sequence of events leading up to the moment the Jeep collided with the law enforcement SUV. The follow-up on the story is expected as additional details emerge from investigators in the coming days.
