CHICAGO — Charges have finally been filed in connection with the fatal hit-and-run crash that killed a road construction worker on Lake Shore Drive in Lakeview last year. Bahiyya Bost, 50, was charged Friday with reckless homicide in a construction zone and failure to report a fatal accident.
Chicago police officers actually detained Bost shortly after the April 21, 2023, crash that killed 45-year-old Kenneth Hernandez. But it took 16 months to gather enough evidence to convince prosecutors to charge her.
Hernandez was in a marked construction zone, standing next to the street sweeper he operated, when Bost allegedly barreled her 2004 Volvo through the construction zone and struck him around 10:50 p.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Federal investigators determined that the construction zone had a site-specific traffic control plan that was properly marked.
According to Bost’s arrest report, CPD investigators compiled video evidence tracking her movements before and after the crash. Shortly before the crash, she swerved across the center line of Fullerton Avenue at Cannon Drive, then headed north onto the drive, according to camera footage. Less than a mile up the road, she allegedly drove through the construction site, killed Hernandez, and kept going.
A short time later, she crashed into another car at 3958 North Clarendon and fled that scene, too, the police report said. With her windshield caved in, she ran a red light at Sheridan and Pratt, barely missing three pedestrians in the crosswalk, according to the report.
As CWBChicago reported on the day after the crash, police arrested the 48-year-old driver of a damaged Volvo about two hours after Hernandez was killed. That person was Bost.
But prosecutors needed more evidence that she was behind the wheel of the car that struck Hernandez, and CPD’s Major Accident Investigations Unit painstakingly pieced a case together. Bost surrendered to CPD on Thursday.
Judge William Fahy rejected a prosecution request to keep Bost in jail pending trial, opting instead to send her home on an ankle monitor.
