Chicago police Wednesday were seeking two men who fled from a U-Haul truck they said was responsible for a collision in a busy Lakeview intersection that killed a 62-year-old woman in a crosswalk.
The crash occurred at Belmont Avenue and Sheridan Road about 10:15 a.m. Tuesday when a U-Haul truck barreled west through a red light and hit the front of a car traveling south on Sheridan Road, Officer Marcel Bright said. Anca Ramniceanu, who lived in the area, was returning from a neighborhood grocery when the truck spun around and struck her in a crosswalk, police and witnesses said.
She was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition, but died of her injuries a few hours later, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The two men in the U-Haul truck ran off before police arrived, leaving the idle truck facing toward the lake. Police had few details to describe the men, other than one was wearing a baseball hat and a red shirt.
Bright said police are trying to determine who rented the vehicle.
Jo Marie Fleming, who was driving the car that was struck in the intersection, described the truck as “totally out of control.”
Fleming said the truck came speeding through the intersection and she only saw it at the last moment.
“If I would have been going 1 m.p.h. faster, I would have been dead,” she said.
“People were saying, ‘Lady, [you’ve] got to get out. You’re leaking [gas] all over the place,'” Fleming said. When she got out of her vehicle in the intersection, she saw the woman’s body in the crosswalk behind the truck.
“It was like something out of a movie, that’s how insane it was,” said Fleming, who wasn’t hurt.
Ramniceanu was born in Bucharest, Romania, and immigrated to Chicago in 1972 with her husband, Mirel, who died four years ago, said niece Mara Sandon, 29.
Sandon said her aunt had retired after working for several years in electrical engineering at Chicago-based companies and had recently moved into an apartment with her younger sister, Sandon’s mother.
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dpblake@tribune.com
