Posted on Apr 05, 2012

A 42-year-old man from the Southwest Side was killed in the early hours of March 12 when he ran his 1995 Ford pickup truck into a light pole in the Bronzeville neighborhood, on the South Side of Chicago.

According to Officer John Mirabelli, a spokesman for the police department, the driver was speeding east on East Pershing Road at about 3:30 a.m., near the torn-down Ida B. Wells rowhouses. The truck crashed into a light pole equipped with a pod camera in the 400 block of East Pershing Road. The force of the impact from this crash threw the already wrecked truck into another light pole, destroying the truck completely. Police believe that the truck may have been traveling at least 100 miles per hour at the time of the accident, but they had yet to confirm this early report.

East Pershing Road, which was wet and presumably slippery from the rain that had been falling, has a posted speed limit of 30 miles per hour.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that the man, whose identity was being withheld pending notification of his family, was declared dead at the scene. He was the only person in the truck.

Authorities were not sure whether drugs or alcohol contributed to the Bronzeville pickup wreck.

The driver’s birthday was less than a week away. He would have been 43 years old.

Our sympathies go out to the family and friends of this man whose life was so abruptly and tragically cut short.