A vehicle driving the wrong way on a Chicago street causes high-speed crash, killing its occupants and injuring 16, police say - CNN

CNN  — 

A car speeding down a Chicago street successful the incorrect direction Wednesday slammed into respective different vehicles astatine an intersection, sidesplitting its 2 occupants and injuring 16 different people, including 7 children, constabulary said.

The vehicle, a Dodge Charger, was traveling “at a precise precocious complaint of speed” the incorrect mode northbound successful a southbound lane successful Chicago’s South Side astir 5 p.m. Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said astatine a quality conference.

The Charger deed 7 different vehicles erstwhile it entered the intersection and burst into flames pursuing the collision, Brown said. Its 2 occupants were killed.

The 16 radical injured were taken to country hospitals, helium said. By Thursday morning, 11 radical inactive were successful hospitals – six successful just condition, and 5 successful bully condition, constabulary said. Ten-month-old and 4-year-old girls and a 6-year-old lad were among those hospitalized.

The Charger had been reported stolen successful Markham, a confederate suburb of Chicago, earlier Wednesday and a agelong firearm was recovered wrong the vehicle, Brown said.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged drivers to dilatory down connected metropolis streets.

“Obviously this is simply a horrible calamity coming arsenic it does connected the eve of Thanksgiving,” Lightfoot said astatine the quality league pursuing the crash. “When you’re going astatine that precocious complaint of speed, anyone that you hit, whether it’s a car oregon a pedestrian, you importantly diminish their quality to survive.”

Investigators are moving to find precisely however accelerated the Charger was traveling earlier the crash, Brown said. Traffic cameras successful the country caught portion of the vehicle’s journey, helium noted.