A 59-year-old Waukegan man has died after a white Chevrolet pickup truck struck him while he was walking in the roadway on Lewis Avenue early Monday morning, in a crash that closed a stretch of the street for nearly four hours. Police say the driver described the road as dark, and a witness reported seeing the truck with only one headlight illuminated.
According to Lake and McHenry County Scanner, the Waukegan Metropolitan Emergency Communications Center received a report around 5:54 a.m. Monday of a pedestrian-involved crash at 11th Street and Lewis Avenue. Responding officers found the man lying off the roadway on the east side of Lewis Avenue with a head injury and a faint pulse. The Waukegan Fire Department performed lifesaving measures at the scene before paramedics transported him to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where he was later pronounced dead.
The pickup truck involved remained at the scene, and its driver, a 23-year-old man from Indianola, Iowa, stayed to speak with investigators. He told officers he was driving northbound on Lewis Avenue and that the roadway was dark at the time. The driver was cooperative and agreed to submit to chemical testing, the outlet reported.
Witness Describes Truck With One Headlight
A witness driving northbound in Lewis Avenue's curb lane told police they swerved to avoid hitting a pedestrian who was walking in the roadway. After safely passing the man, the witness looked in the rearview mirror and noticed a truck in the curb lane with only one headlight illuminated. The witness turned around in traffic to check whether the truck had struck the pedestrian and found that it had, according to the same account relayed to police.
A separate southbound motorist told the outlet it was dark at the time, that the pedestrian was wearing dark clothes, and that there was no sidewalk or clear grassy path to walk along that stretch of road. Southbound Lewis Avenue was shut down at 11th Street shortly after the crash, and per Lake County PASSAGE, the closure between 10th Street and 14th Street lasted until around 9:50 a.m. Monday.
Investigation Remains Open, No Charges Filed
The Waukegan Police Department's Major Crash Unit responded to the scene and is handling the investigation, which remains open. As of Friday morning, no citations or charges had been announced against the driver, and the Lake County Coroner's Office had not yet released the victim's identity, the report notes.
The crash came less than a month after another Waukegan pedestrian death involving a pickup truck. James Ange, 56, formerly of Fox Lake, died on October 4 after a pickup truck struck him on Grand Avenue near Baldwin Avenue, the same stretch of the city covered in the outlet's reporting on this latest incident.
A Troubling Statewide Trend
The Lewis Avenue crash also lands amid a broader rise in pedestrian deaths across Illinois. Statewide, 219 fatal pedestrian-involved crashes occurred in 2024, a 9.5% increase from 200 the year before, according to Illinois Department of Transportation data reported by the Daily Herald. In the six-county region that includes Lake County, pedestrian fatalities totaled 144 in 2024, up 6.7% from 135 the prior year, the newspaper found. The Daily Herald noted that the 2024 figures were preliminary and could still change before being finalized.
Waukegan's Lewis Avenue corridor has seen fatal crashes before. In January 2023, a head-on collision at Lewis Avenue and Beach Road killed 36-year-old Malcolm Earl of Waukegan, whom the Arlington Cardinal reported died from blunt force injuries sustained in that crash. Monday's death remains under investigation, and authorities have not released further details on the driver's status or any potential findings.
