North Aurora, Illinois: One Dead and One Seriously Injured in Multi-Vehicle Crash That Closed I-88

A multi-vehicle crash on westbound Interstate 88 in North Aurora, Illinois, killed one person and sent a second person to a hospital with serious injuries early on Sunday, November 1, and shut down every westbound lane while state troopers investigated.

Illinois State Police Troop 3 responded at about 4:47 a.m. to the crash on I-88 westbound at Lincolnway Street and Route 31, near milepost 117 in North Aurora, state police said. FOX 32 Chicago, ABC 7 Chicago, CBS News Chicago and Patch all carried the state police account of the crash on Sunday.

All westbound lanes closed

State police closed all westbound lanes at the scene while troopers worked, and the scene was still active later on Sunday, according to the state police information carried by the Chicago outlets. I-88 is the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway, the main east and west toll road across the western Chicago suburbs, and North Aurora sits in Kane County at the Route 31 crossing. A full westbound closure at that interchange on a Sunday morning left drivers with no through route on the tollway at milepost 117 while the investigation ran.

Troopers gave no reopening time in the accounts published on Sunday, and state police tied the closure directly to the active investigation at the scene. Until that work finished, the westbound side of the tollway at North Aurora stayed shut.

What police have said, and what they have not

State police called their information preliminary, and the list of what they have not released is long. They said one person was declared dead after the crash and a second person was transported to an area hospital with serious injuries. They did not release the name of the person who died. They did not name the hospital. They did not say how the vehicles collided, and beyond calling it a multi-vehicle crash they did not give a vehicle count in the published accounts.

FOX 32 Chicago reported that state police had no additional information available while the investigation continued. That means the basic questions a fatal interstate crash raises, what happened in the lanes at 4:47 a.m. and why, were still unanswered in the public record on Sunday.

The investigation continues

Troop 3 covers the tollway crashes in this part of Kane County, and its troopers stayed with the North Aurora scene through Sunday. As of the reports published on Sunday, the crash at milepost 117 remained an open, preliminary investigation, with the dead person's name and the injured person's condition still to come from state police.

Drivers who use I-88 through North Aurora should expect the next facts in this case, the names, the vehicle count and the cause, to arrive in a later state police release rather than from the scene.