A 25-year-old man heading home from a friend’s graduation celebration never made it back to Wheaton after a drunken, unlicensed driver plowed into his Uber as they sat stopped in traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway, prosecutors said.
Benjamin Farraday and two friends who were in the rideshare with him had spent the evening of May 16 celebrating in Chicago before ordering an Uber for the trip home, officials said. As they traveled west on the Ike, traffic backed up near Ashland Avenue, forcing all traffic to merge into the far-right lane. Prosecutors said the Uber had been completely stopped for about a minute, with the driver’s foot on the brake, when a GMC Yukon driven by 21-year-old Jose Perez Marin slammed into it from behind.
The impact launched the Uber into a Buick ahead of it, which was then pushed into a Jeep, prosecutors said. Data recovered from the Yukon allegedly showed it was traveling 65 mph moments before the crash. The vehicle’s brakes were applied just a half-second before impact, reducing its speed to about 45 mph at the moment of collision, according to prosecutors.
A state trooper arrived at the scene about a minute later and found Perez Marin helping his fiancée climb out of the Yukon through a broken passenger-side window, prosecutors said. She reportedly suffered two skull fractures in the crash.
All of the Uber’s occupants managed to get out of the vehicle except Farraday. One of his friends tried to keep him awake while waiting for an ambulance, according to prosecutors. But he died from blunt-force injuries.
Investigators who spoke with Perez Marin observed bloodshot eyes and detected the odor of alcohol on his breath, prosecutors said, but he refused DUI testing. A blood sample obtained while he received medical treatment revealed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.137, according to prosecutors. The legal limit in Illinois is 0.08.
The crash seriously injured several others. One of Farraday’s friends suffered a broken nose, a brain bleed, and a head wound that required stitches. His other friend received stitches for a facial injury and required a blood transfusion because of blood loss. The driver of the Buick suffered bruising. An infant riding in the Buick sustained cuts to the face, according to prosecutors.
Perez Marin is charged with three counts of aggravated DUI, including aggravated DUI causing a fatal crash. Judge Ankur Srivastava granted the state’s detention petition, keeping Perez Marin in jail pending trial.
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