In the cramped living room of Rachel Hernandez’s Back of the Yards home, pictures chronicling the life of her 24-year-old daughter, Amy Morales, hang on every wall and sit on every shelf. There are photos of Amy as an infant at her baptism, as a little girl at elementary school, as a teenager at her cotillion and as a woman at her wedding.
With so many smiling images of life surrounding her, Hernandez on Sunday still couldn’t grasp that Amy Morales is now gone. The young woman was one of four people–two couples driving home from an evening visiting other members of their tightknit family–killed by a allegedly drug-addled driver in an automobile accident on the South Side Saturday night.
“I want my baby back,” a crying Hernandez said, while embracing relatives who had driven up Sunday from her daughter’s birthplace in Sterling, Ill. “I just want my baby back.”
John Howorth, 37, of 3621 S. Marshfield Ave., was charged Sunday with four counts of reckless homicide in connection with the accident, said Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokesman Robert Benjamin. Howorth, in fair condition Sunday at Cook County Hospital, allegedly had both cocaine and PCP in his system, authorities said.
On Saturday, Amy Morales and her husband, 24-year-old Elias Morales, were out with his cousin, Barbara Vega, 22, and her husband, Placido Vega, 24, both of Woodstock. About 7:20 p.m., while the two couples waited in a 1984 Cutlass Ciera for a stoplight to change at Ashland Avenue and 44th Street, they were struck from behind by a 1991 Camaro driven by Howorth, police said.
The accident, just blocks from the Morales home, ignited a fire and pushed the Ciera approximately 200 feet south along Ashland.
The accident played out in front of a fire station and two police officers, but that didn’t help. The impact was so great–police said the Camaro was traveling about 100 m.p.h.–that there was little authorities could do to save the victims, all of whom were pronounced dead a short time later.
While still pinned in the car, police reports said, Howorth told the first two police officers on the scene that “he was God.”
Firefighters in the nearby station also heard the crash and rushed outside, fire officials said. They doused the fire that started in the Ciera’s engine. Firefighters extricated the victims by cutting off the car’s roof and removing two of its doors. The Camaro also was cut open so Howorth could be freed.
Howorth then allegedly fought with a paramedic and a firefighter in an ambulance en route to Cook County after the accident, authorities said. Benjamin said the man faces two counts of aggravated battery in connection with that scuffle.
Howorth further was issued traffic citations for allegedly driving under the influence of drugs, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, failure to carry a driver’s license and driving without insurance, Chicago Police Department traffic specialist Tom Shea said.
Howorth suffered multiple blunt trauma, although authorities would not elaborate.
On Sunday, the families of the victims gathered in the yellow wood frame home on the 4800 block of South Laflin Street where Amalia Morales–her given name–grew up.
Amy and Elias married three years ago, and they lived in a coachhouse behind her parents’ home. They loved to dance to Mexican music, family members said.
“They were still like honeymooners,” said Lisa Urrutia, a cousin from Sterling. “You couldn’t ask for a better couple.”
They were planning to have children this year, family members said.
By all accounts, mother and daughter were extremely close: Amy Morales was an only child, and she and her mother worked at the same currency exchange on Ashland Avenue.
“They were like sisters,” Urrutia said. “I don’t know how (Rachel) is going to do without her.”
Elias Morales and his wife’s father, Arturo Hernandez, were also close. They worked at the same meat-packing factory in DeKalb, relatives said.
The Vegas moved to northwest suburban Woodstock from central Mexico two years ago, said Guadalupe Zabala, a cousin who also lives in Back of the Yards. The couple came to the United States looking for work and settled near relatives.
“They were happy to be here,” Zabala said. “But they missed their family in Mexico.”
Both Vegas had worked in the Claussen Pickle Co. plant in Woodstock, but Placido Vega recently left the plant, Zabala said.
“They were magnificent people,” she said. “They liked to be with their family. They always came to visit us in Chicago.”
The Vegas were driving southbound on Ashland Avenue, taking the Moraleses home, when they stopped for a red light at 44th Street.
Witnesses said when the Ciera was hit, it caught fire. A “stream of fire” followed the Ciera as the impact of the crash propelled it forward, said Patrick Howe, a fire department spokesman.
The Ciera was completely demolished, said Raul Camargo, who witnessed the crash. “It was a four-door car, but it looked a two-door” afterward, he said.
After the initial crash, Howorth’s Camaro hit another car, a Nissan driven by a 20-year-old Chicago man that was heading northbound on Ashland Avenue. The man, whom police did not identify, was treated for minor injuries and released from Michael Reese Hospital, said Sgt. Bill Diaz of the police department’s major accidents unit.
