Illinois City,IL : Experts spar over claim of taxi malfunctioning in fatal crash on July, Thursday 27th 2017

Tatijana Janko walked to her train station one summer morning five years ago past the aftermath of a devastating car wreck.

Streetlights were toppled and sparking. There were skid marks on the ground and a gathering crowd. A crumpled taxicab had flipped and rolled and caught fire.

It was a startling scene, but the personal horror would come later. Janko learned soon afterward that her husband, Eric Kerestes, had been struck by the speeding taxicab and killed.

Kerestes, a promising 30-year-old engineer who married his college sweetheart, was pronounced dead at the scene. Janko, stunned, went to the morgue to gather his belongings, including his mangled wedding ring.

"I tried not to imagine what had happened to his arm, and the rest of him," she said Tuesday, testifying at the trial of the taxi's driver, John Kesse, who was charged with reckless homicide.

In the moments before Janko passed by, Kesse's Checker cab had sped down Milwaukee Avenue, blowing past stoplights and weaving into oncoming lanes. When it reached Chicago Avenue, it slammed into a curb, crashed into light poles and struck Kerestes, who was thrown into the air and landed in a parking lot some 200 feet away.

As jurors began to hear the case this week, prosecutors described Kesse as thoughtless and rash, a driver zooming down a city street without regard for the passenger in his cab or the safety of the public.

Kesse's defense attorneys countered by arguing the cabbie had no choice — a random electrical problem made the taxi accelerate, they said, telling the jury the car was no longer in Kesse's control when it plowed into Kerestes.



Source :
Experts spar over claim of taxi malfunctioning in fatal crash