Witness to fatal accident nearly a victim himself

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Updated: February 2, 2012 4:11PM

As the investigation into a three-car accident two weeks ago turned into an investigation into a fatality accident last week, witnesses are coming to terms with what they saw.

Shruti Phandis, the 26-year-old Buffalo Grove woman who was one of four people hospitalized Jan. 13 after a head-on crash on Milwaukee Avenue in front of The Cubby Bear North, died Jan. 18 from her injuries. Alan Gold, another Buffalo Grove resident, was driving the car in front of Phandis’s, and had to put into practice a bit of advice he said he hammers into his two college-aged children:

Drive in the right-hand lane whenever possible. If you are ever in the path of a car driving on the wrong side of the street, you will have more room to swerve.

“My wife says I swerved, but I don’t remember,” Gold said Monday of the moment he was in the path of a car on the wrong side of the street. “I yelled ‘That guy’s going to hit somebody!’ Then I looked in my rearview mirror, and kaboom.

“I could hear the cars hit, I could see the car go flying up in the air,” Gold said. “My wife says I probably saved the entire family.”

His wife and the kids he had prepped for swerving were in their Chevrolet Tahoe as they drove home from dinner at a nearby restaurant. The Golds were celebrating their last night together before the children, 23 and 20, returned the next morning to the University of Illinois.

At 8:50 p.m., Gold had just turned north from Lake Cook Road onto Milwaukee Avenue; he was in the right-hand lane. The streets were full of dinner-hour drivers, but the snow from the day before had been brushed off and the pavement was dry.

So he had no explanation for what he saw: the headlights of a Honda CRV coming straight at him. Gold said his sales job keeps him on the road for days — he had just come home from a 1,000-mile trek to Ohio — and looking back, he found it ironic that he nearly got into the most serious accident of his life just blocks from his home, near the intersection of Buffalo Grove Road and Illinois Route 22.

“It happened so quick,” he said, “and I’ve gone over it in my mind 100 times.”

Lincolnshire police were already looking for the CRV, which was reportedly speeding and striking street signs on Illinois Route 22, prompting numerous 911 calls from other drivers. Now traveling south in Milwaukee Avenue’s northbound lanes, the Honda flew by a southbound Lincolnshire officer, who began a pursuit.

Then the CRV’s driver and the Golds missed each other. And then the driver struck the Toyota that Phandis was riding in, and then the Jeep behind Phandis struck them, as well.

“The Toyota got lifted up in the back end,” Lincolnshire police investigator John-Erik Anderson said Monday. “The guy behind them literally went under the car.”

Gold said that when he saw the crash, he pulled into the parking lot of the Hampton Inn and called 911. He was about to run back to the crash site, but the officer chasing the CRV had already arrived. The Golds continued home, the kids packed up, and Gold called police again to file his report.

“The next morning, the kids drove back to college — with the caveat to be extra, extra careful,” Gold said. “I don’t know if I’d call it life-changing, but it was certainly sobering.”

Police have not released the name of the driver, who has not been arrested or charged with any crimes relating to the accident. Anderson said the forensics reports that will indicate the driver’s speed and sobriety level are still about two weeks away, but Phandis’s death would make any charges more severe.

“The investigation takes a different tone now,” he said