10 years later, fatal Oswego crash still affects those involved

Ten years ago this Saturday, in the early morning hours of Feb. 11, 2007, an Infiniti sedan packed with eight teens and a drunk driver named Sandra Vasquez slammed into a utility pole along Ill. Route 31 in Oswego.

Five of Vasquez’s passengers died: Matthew Frank, 17, Tiffany Urso, 16, Jessica Nutoni, 15, and Katherine “Katie” Merkel, 14, died at the scene and James McGee, 14, died of his injuries a week later. Three of the other passengers, all teenagers, suffered injuries but survived, and testified at Vasquez’s trial.

Vasquez, now 33, was found guilty in 2010 of multiple counts of aggravated DUI and reckless homicide, and sentenced to 15 years in state prison. A state appellate court upheld the sentence in 2012.

Vasquez currently resides in Logan Correctional Center in downstate Lincoln, Illinois. Her projected parole date is March 28, 2023, and her projected release date is March 28, 2025, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

According to testimony and court documents, Vasquez had consumed alcohol – one beer and a “Jagerbomb” – before traveling to her aunt’s house in Boulder Hill to pick up her sister, whom she dropped off at the house earlier. When she got to the house to pick up her sister, she encountered a drinking party. Vasquez testified that when she went to leave, she agreed to drive some of the teens home but others piled into the car.

Kathleen Colton, the Geneva-based attorney who defended Vasquez in court, said she will occasionally hear from her former client via a Christmas card, but has not contacted her recently. She said Vasquez’s family had been regularly visiting her in prison.

Colton is a seasoned defense attorney, having worked trials involving murders, rapes, and other horrific crimes, but said Vasquez stood out for her as a client.

“She was just a very good person, very sweet-natured, and easy to deal with as a client,” she said.

Colton said she is still convinced that something happened in the vehicle to cause Vasquez to crash.

“I always will believe up to today and afterwards that something happened in the passenger compartment of that car to cause the crash,” she said. “The problem was that the person or persons who knew that, knew what happened, wouldn’t admit it in court. And that was very frustrating. I don’t believe the full truth ever came out at that trial.”

Colton said “everything was blamed on” Vasquez.

Citing the raw emotions around the anniversary, Donna Dwyer, the mother of Matthew Frank, declined to speak about the tragedy, but posted a statement on social media that she agreed to have published here.

“When asked to speak about the crash 10 years later I declined,” she wrote. “I’m completely numb and have begun to shut down again. My thoughts are all over and I just can’t grasp onto one and stay there. It still feels unreal and I wish someone would wake me and tell me it was just a bad dream. For 10 years my family runs from each other at this time, as it’s still too much to deal with our own pain, much less look at the pain of each other. In the beginning I regretted ever having Matt because the pain was too much to bear, but 10 years later I wouldn’t have missed a minute of being Matt’s mom and I cherish every moment I was given with him.”

A reminder of bad decisions

State’s Attorney Eric Weis said the office decided to place a frame featuring photos of the crash victims, a photo of the car at the crash scene, and the date of the crash, in the office’s waiting room in Yorkville. It serves as a reminder of the consequences of one’s decisions, he said. The office’s victim/witness coordinator, Holly Mann, organized the piece, Weis said.

“We had been working on something little to do as sort of a reminder for those that come through this office of what happens sometimes with split-second decisions, how they change people’s lives,” he said. “We didn’t want to single out this case ... we didn’t want to single out one victim over another, to say you’re more important or less important.”

Weis said he thought it was appropriate “to put that out there as a dedication to all the victims that come through this office.”

Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird said Vasquez was trying to do a good thing by giving the teens a ride home.

“These kids sought her out and they were trying to get home, and she thought she was doing the right thing by trying to take the kids home, and because of her impairment, that was the bad decision,” he said. “The kids made bad decisions by sneaking out and not being honest with their parents, and then she’s trying to do something good by getting the kids home. Obviously, she’s probably looked back at that night more than anyone in this room and said what could I have done differently.”

Baird recalled getting the call to go out to the scene, and quickly checking on his son and friends who were in his son’s bedroom, playing video games. He knew that teens would sometimes sneak out and do things they weren’t supposed to be doing.

“They were in the room, but I gotta tell you, I questioned, maybe my son snuck out, because I was asleep,” he said.

Weis said the case affected him deeply.

“I remember just going through the whole case and the trial itself and being emotionally drained,” Weis said. “You don’t ever celebrate; I don’t think there’s a celebration when the trial’s over and the verdicts come back. Obviously you want to prevail, you want to make sure justice was done, and in this case justice was done. The families had a substantial burden lifted off them when the case was over.”

He continued, “By the time you’re done, [you’re] just like, I just want to go home and see my family and tell them I love them and put them in a bubble and sit there for a little while.”

But Weis said in his line of work they “don’t get that lull.”

“She was sentenced on a Friday, and Friday night we were out at a shooting,” he said. “So when I think I can sit down and relax for a little bit, something else happens. And in our line of work, that’s just going to happen.”

Oswego Police Chief Jeff Burgner, who was a sergeant at the time, wasn’t working the night of the crash but was involved in the investigation afterward, and interviewed Vasquez.

Burgner spoke of the impact the crash had on the community.

“It resonated through our community very strongly for years,” he said. “Even today, people still talk about this incident, this crash, and it still has a presence within the community. So many officers in our department had an involvement in that in some way, shape, or form. It had an impact on all of them in a way that, I don’t think any of them had probably ever seen anything like that and probably will never see anything like that again in their career.”

Operation Impact teaches consequences

To make some kind of positive change out of an awful situation, Brian Caldwell and Jennifer Jones Sinnot of the Rotary Club of Oswego put together Operation Impact, a program that educates kids about vehicle safety, including the consequences of drunk driving.

“We collectively gathered a group of community leaders,” Caldwell said. “Rotary was kind of the catalyst of getting this program started.”

The Oswego Police Department, School District 308, the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office, the Kendall County Coroner’s Office, and Rush-Copley Medical Center are among the partners that participate in the program, Caldwell said.

“The whole idea of the program, and the concept, is, if you make a bad decision you’re going to wind up at the police department,” he said. “If your bad decision caused injury, you’re going to go to the ER, and if it’s extremely significant you’re going to wind up in the coroner’s office.”

Sinnot teaches the impact of such decisions on students’ insurance bills, Caldwell said.

“For each and every decision, there’s a consequence,” Caldwell said. “From an insurance standpoint, there’s an increase or decrease of premiums, based on driving experience.”

Burgner said the fact that the school district continues to use the Operation Impact program since 2008 “shows the value in the program.”

“To have them step up and see the need and move this program forward, and still have that program in our schools today, shows that it is a sustainable program,” he said.

Burgner said that over the past 10 years as Oswego’s population has grown, the proportion of teens involved in crashes has remained the same. He said his department also saw a slight reduction in the number of crashes where teens living in the Oswego ZIP code were at-fault drivers.

“To me, even though it’s not a monumental number in the grand scheme of things, it’s still a reduction,” he said. “To me, that’s a success.”

Baird praised the Operation Impact program. Baird said Oswego saw a more than 20 percent decrease of accidents from 16- to 20-year-olds for five years following the crash, but it’s unknown whether it’s related to the crash or Operation Impact.

“That could be a positive,” he said. “There’s a positive interaction because the sheriff’s office, Oswego police, and local business people have more interaction with the youth of the community.”

Weis said it’s difficult to quantify whether programs like Operation Impact, or the lasting effect of the crash, affect young people’s thinking about drinking and driving.

“If it stopped one person from getting behind the wheel or one person made that decision, we’ll never know that that actually happened,” Weis said. “I like to think it does.”