Driver In Fiery Crash At 86th Street And Cicero Avenue ‘Cited And Released’

BURBANK, IL — A Chicago man said to have eluded police that resulted in a fiery crash Saturday morning at 86th Street and Cicero Avenue was cited and released in compliance with Illinois’s SAFE-T Act, Burbank police said.

Michael Adams-Parks, 34, was charged with felony aggravated fleeing and eluding, aggravated speeding, driving while license revoked, resisting a peace officer, disobeying a traffic control device. Adams-Parks was released the same day on pre-trial release.

Around 10:10 a.m., a Burbank police officer pulled over a Chrysler 300 s in a parking lot near 79th Street and Long Avenue. Police said in a news release that the vehicle was sought in an ongoing, unspecified felony investigation.

During the traffic stop, the driver fled the scene at a high rate of speed, heading eastbound on 79th Street, police said. The driver continued speeding southbound on Cicero Avenue, where police said the Chrysler 300 struck a box truck in the southbound lanes near the intersection of Cicero and 86th Street. The impact caused both vehicles to burst into flames.

Jan Forney, of Hometown, told Patch that she and her husband, John, were at Dollar General at 86th Street and Cicero Avenue when they heard the crash as it happened. She says she was in the back of the store shopping, when her husband finished his shopping and was standing in line at the cash register.

“John was shopping for his mom,” Forney said. “He was checking out, all of a sudden I hear women screaming, ‘fire, fire.’”

At first, Forney thought the dollar store was on fire. She left her cart full of items in the aisle and exited the store. Her husband, who is a Hometown alderman with 35 years of medical training, ran outside to see if he could help when a large bang was heard.

“I just saw huge flames,” she said. “We kept hearing explosions. It turned out that the tires were popping because of the fire.”

Forney and her husband were standing about 25 feet from the burning vehicles. The Hometown Fire Department arrived and quickly extinguished the flames. Traffic was diverted from the intersection for several hours.

She said her husband witnessed the takedown. A man ran past him with officers in hot pursuit, past her husband.

“He says if he had known police were chasing the guy, he would have put his foot out to trip him,” she told Patch.

Fornoy said she later learned that the driver of the Chrysler 300 allegedly got out of the burning vehicle through the passenger window before running behind the dollar store, where Burbank officers caught him trying to scale the fence.

By then, she had started recording the fire on her phone. Officers can be seen on video walking a man back to the patrol car. Forney can be heard asking her husband if there was danger of an explosion.

Most of us had left our carts full of merchandise and left the store,” she said. “We didn’t know if the glass from the store windows would break from the heat, it was that intense.”

Before the Hometown Fire Department and Burbank police arrived, Forney said other motorists were just trying to quickly get past the burning vehicles.

“It just happened so fast,” Forney said. “It made me think of people on [Sept. 11, 2001] that had to make a quick decision.”

Forney and her husband left the parking lot immediately.

“They were closing Cicero in all directions. We didn’t want to get trapped,” she said.

Minor injuries from the accident were reported. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available, police said.