(The following article by Eric Herman was posted on the Chicago Sun Times website on March 4.)
CHICAGO — A hit-and-run driver rammed a sport-utility vehicle into a Metra station in Berwyn on Friday morning, killing a ticket clerk just as she was arriving to work.
The clerk, 58-year-old Kathleen Talmage of Riverside, was pronounced dead at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, police chief Bill Kushner said. The driver fled shortly after the crash, and Kushner said he was still at large Friday afternoon.
“It’s a tragic, senseless accident,” Kushner said.
The black Range Rover was traveling west on Windsor Avenue and plowed into the Metra ticketing facility at the Harlem Avenue stop about 5 a.m., according to police and a woman who lives nearby. The Range Rover jumped a curb, hurtled up an embankment and landed inside the building — burying Talmage beneath bricks and rubble.
Diana Lebron, who lives in a building facing the station, heard a “bang” at 5 a.m. that awakened her, she said. Her daughter, Magdalena Perez, looked outside and called police, Lebron said.
Lebron said her daughter saw the driver stand outside the SUV and put his hands on his head, looking at the damage as if in shock. Her daughter described the man as light-skinned, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 180 to 200 pounds and wearing a white jacket, Lebron said.
Driver may have been injured
“He was outside walking around, bewildered, in a daze, and then he just took off,” she said.
The Harlem Avenue ticketing facility stands just west of Windsor’s intersection with Maple Avenue, on the south side of tracks that carry commuter trains between Aurora and Chicago. BNSF Railway — formerly the Burlington Northern — operates the line for Metra under contract. Talmage had worked for BNSF for 40 years, said railway spokesman Steve Forsberg.
After the crash, the driver ran south on Maple, Kushner said, leaving behind the Range Rover with Illinois license plates. Kushner said police had not found the SUV’s owner and did not know if the owner was at the wheel. Blood found in the SUV suggested he was injured in the crash, Kushner said. He described the driver as a white male.
The Range Rover is registered to a Riverside man who lived about 1-1/2 miles from the Harlem station. No one answered the door at the condominium, which is for sale, according to a neighbor.
Berwyn police had not determined Friday if alcohol was a factor. But, said Kushner, “if you take a look at the building, it looks like he was going at a high rate of speed.”
Windsor narrows at Maple to accommodate the ticket building. A yellow-painted curb curves left in front of a small embankment, where the Range Rover churned up dirt and mulch and sent bricks flying.
“Everybody knows about that little angle there that you have to go around. He must have been flying,” Lebron said.
‘A very nice person’
Talmage was “literally just unlocking the door” of the ticket building when the Range Rover plowed into it, Kushner said. Her keys still dangled from the lock when fire units responded. Berwyn Fire Chief Richard Kalivoda said rescuers arriving at the scene tried to get into the office inside the building but could not open the door. Looking through the window, one officer saw an arm or a leg and realized someone was buried beneath the rubble. Talmage was bleeding and unconscious, Kalivoda said.
Talmage’s neighbors on Nuttall Road in Riverside described her as a kind person who enjoyed the theater and spending time with her granddaughter Brittany. “She was just a very nice person, kind of quiet,” said Jean Gibson, 46. “It’s very shocking.”
Talmage lived with her husband, Juan Talancon, and stepson, Chris, Gibson said. The family has a beagle named Emmett, she said. Talmage has a daughter from a previous marriage, Gibson said.