Finnegan McKee liked to sing and dance in the kitchen, according to his mother, Christina McKee. He was smart, and he loved working in the garden with his father Schyler — and using his tools.
“He could name all of them,” she said.
Last month, the McKee family lost their 2-year-old son, Finnegan, after a car slammed into a Portillo’s location in Oswego.
This past week, the family filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain in connection with the crash.
On July 30 at around 1:55 p.m., a vehicle crashed through the front entrance of a Portillo’s restaurant at 2810 Route 34 in Oswego, according to past reporting. The 2-year-old boy, who was inside the restaurant, died as a result of the crash, and 12 people were injured, according to past reporting. Police have said they believe it to have been an accident.
The lawsuit against Portillo’s was filed on Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court by Chicago-based GWC Injury Lawyers, which is representing the McKee family and some of the restaurant patrons involved in the crash, according to an announcement from the law firm.
“An incident like this should never happen,” Louis A. Cairo, a partner at GWC Injury Lawyers, said at a press conference on Friday in Chicago. “The shame of it all is that it was 100% foreseeable for Portillo’s, and it was 100% preventable.”
Portillo’s did not immediately respond to The Beacon-News’ request for comment.
The lawsuit states that the parking spots in front of the restaurant had no physical barriers to prevent or slow a vehicle from potentially driving into the storefront, like parking stops, parking bumpers, fencing, walls or bollards, which are vertical posts meant to control traffic. The lawsuit also claims that Portillo’s “situated its tables so as to locate its seated diners within feet of the glass entrance doors without any physical barriers between them and head-in parking spaces.”
Allison L. Dolan, an attorney at GWC, said on Friday that there were already bollards at the location, but not at the front entrance. At the press conference, Cairo pointed to photos of bollards he said are at the building’s drive-through windows and concrete parking blocks in parking spaces on the side of the building.
Pointing to other examples of similar crashes into storefronts in the region in recent years, the lawsuit alleges that head-in parking spaces placed directly in front of the restaurant’s main entrance without any protective barriers between the parking lot and restaurant’s glass entryway, and between the parking lot and the restaurant’s seating area, “created an unreasonable risk of vehicle intrusion into areas where patrons enter, exit and sat to dine.”
“Common sense says, ‘Well if these things exist to begin with, then why would we not be having them in every single parking spot in front of every single establishment?’” Cairo said on Friday.
A statement from the law firm about the incident said the entrance of the restaurant and parking lot “are designed in such a manner that this type of tragic event seems almost inevitable.”
Two counts are included in the lawsuit that was filed Tuesday, one under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act and the other under the Illinois Survival Act. The lawsuit is seeking damages from Portillo’s in excess of $100,000.
Dolan said the law firm is still investigating all of the entities that could be responsible for the incident, but said it wants to hold Portillo’s responsible because incidents like this are “exactly why safety barriers exist.”
According to the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County’s website, the next court date for the lawsuit is set for Oct. 15.
As for the crash itself, no citations had been issued or charges filed as of Friday, according to a spokesperson for the Oswego Police Department. Police said the driver was a 50-year-old woman, who was the only occupant of the vehicle that crashed into the restaurant.
The case is still under investigation, and is expected to be completed next week, officials said.
In a statement posted to the village of Oswego’s Facebook page following the crash, Village President Ryan Kauffman said that Oswego is reviewing its ordinances and safety protocols to see what else it can do to prevent similar incidents in the future, and that “nothing is off the table when it comes to protecting lives.”
Kauffman’s statement noted that Oswego already requires bollards for all commercial outdoor dining areas, but is reviewing how other communities have responded to similar incidents and exploring additional safety measures.
Oswego Village Administrator Dan Di Santo told The Beacon-News on Friday that Portillo’s has submitted drawings to the village for permit review in order to add bollards and wheel stops, the concrete blocks installed in parking spaces, to the front of the Oswego building.
Di Santo said that the next step would be for village staff to review the plans and approve them and issue a permit if they meet code, or provide feedback on how the plans can be modified in order to meet code.
Finnegan McKee’s parents said at the press conference on Friday that they hope to be part of policy changes to prevent crashes like this in the future.
“Just because we weren’t able to foresee it at the time, doesn’t mean others weren’t already aware of the negligence,” said Schyler McKee, Finnegan’s father, who is also acting as the independent administrator of his estate in the lawsuit. “We want safety precautions to be implemented at all businesses to prevent this from happening to anyone else.”
“We want everybody else to be able to go home with their families that they are out with,” Christina McKee, Finnegan’s mother, added. “You don’t go out somewhere expecting to not come home with your 2-year-old.”
Now, as they wait for change, the family is keeping with them a teddy bear, clad in pajamas, meant to represent Finnegan, because they “don’t want him left out for anything that (they) do as a family,” Christina McKee explained on Friday.
“I’m glad that we had all that time with him,” she said.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
