Investigation: Driver suffered seizure in advance of fatal Winnetka crash

A driver’s seizure was “most likely” the cause of a May traffic collision in Winnetka that killed two women and hospitalized an infant, according to the results of a three-and-half-month investigation from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigation documents — which the sheriff’s office provided to The Record on Aug. 26 following public-records requests — show the department closed the case in mid August, concluding that “there is insufficient probable cause to support a criminal charge” in the deaths of Sediqeh “Asra” Samadi, 37, of Kenilworth, and her mother, Saeideh Sigary, 58, pedestrians whom a car struck on May 2 on a sidewalk along Ridge Road.

The investigation, according to public documents and a sheriff’s office statement, took into account statements from the car’s passenger and other witnesses, data collected from the vehicle, and the results of medical testing, among other evidence.

“Sheriff’s Police detectives conducted a thorough and intensive investigation of the accident,” the sheriff’s statement says. “… At the conclusion of the investigation, detectives determined there was no evidence to warrant criminal charges and that the accident was most likely the result of a medical event suffered by the driver.”

The statement also says that sheriff’s detectives remained in contact with the victims’ family about the progress of the investigation. The family declined to speak with The Record.

The incident

As detailed in public documents and witness statements to police, in the early evening of May 2, Asra Samadi and her mother, Saeideh Sigary, left Samadi’s Kenilworth home, taking Samadi’s 4-month-old son along in a stroller for a walk in the neighborhood.

Under a fading sun, the family headed west on Maclean Avenue and crossed Ridge Road en route for a sidewalk on the west side of the street. They walked about 50 yards along the sidewalk, coming up to an exit drive of the Indian Hill Club, about two blocks from home.

Inside a black 2020 Jeep Cherokee, a driver and a friend were traveling southbound on Church Road (before it transitions to Ridge) in Winnetka. Starting from the North Side of Chicago, according to their statements to police, they were approaching their destination: the Indian Hill Club. There, they were to meet the driver’s father and others at a party.

At Winnetka Avenue, the Cherokee stopped at a stop sign before continuing on in typical fashion, said one neighbor, whose home camera captured the vehicle at the intersection. The stop sign was approximately 150 feet from the Indian Hill entrance and 400 feet from the eventual crash site.

The vehicle’s data shows the Cherokee then reached 30 mph. It passed the club’s entrance and began to move erratically on the roadway, as witnesses and the Cherokee’s passenger told police. One witness driving a northbound vehicle on the same road at the time told police she had to swerve to avoid the oncoming Cherokee.

The driver of the Cherokee reportedly was incapacitated. The passenger described to police hearing the driver make a choking sound before the vehicle began to drift. The passenger told police she grabbed the steering wheel in an attempt to regain control of the vehicle.

Just south of the Indian Hill exit at just before 6 p.m., the Cherokee left the roadway. It struck Samadi, Sigary and Samadi’s 4-month-old son before hitting a tree and coming to a stop.

Several bystanders witnessed the crash and stayed to help. One of Samadi’s neighbors who was walking his dogs near the scene asked the driver of a passing SUV to call 911 and attempted to help the victims.

Multiple witnesses told police that Samadi and Sigary were trapped under the Cherokee, but a man and woman were able to get under the vehicle and pull the injured child from his stroller. The woman wrapped the boy in a jacket.

In county officer Lidia Lopez’s body-cam recording, a Winnetka police officer reports to her that the boy was “responding” and “alert and crying” before he was transported to a local hospital.

Multiple witnesses told police that the Cherokee’s passenger quickly exited the vehicle and was in a panicked state. “Hysterical,” the passenger reportedly said to one of the bystanders, “I don’t know what happened.”

The car’s driver, witnesses reported, remained in the car with its deployed airbags. One male witness told police that the driver appeared disoriented and “almost catatonic.” A physician who was on the scene removed the driver from the car and laid her on Ridge Road, according to officers speaking to Lopez in the body-cam footage.

The driver later told investigators that she “blacked out” and remembers coming to while laying on the ground.

In Lopez’s body-cam footage, multiple first-responding officers tell her that the driver apparently suffered a medical emergency prior to the crash.

First responders out of Wilmette arrived first, according to reports on the body-cam recording. Kenilworth and Winnetka units also responded. The emergency crews reportedly raised the Cherokee and extricated Samadi. She was transported to Evanston Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m., the documents say.

Sigary was trapped under the vehicle and not immediately moved. A responding fire captain pronounced her dead, authorities said in body-cam footage, while the medical examiner provided an official death pronouncement at 8:04 p.m.

The boy was transported to Evanston Hospital and then Advocate Lutheran Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge.

The investigation

The incident occurred off the southbound lanes of the 0-100 block of Ridge Road, less than a block south of where it transitions to Church Road. The official listed address of the incident is 1 Indian Hill Road, the address of Indian Hill Club.

Although Indian Hill Club and a small pocket of homes to its south are bordered by one or more of the Villages of Winnetka, Kenilworth and Wilmette, the area is located in unincorporated New Trier Township and under the jurisdiction of Cook County.

At 6:07 p.m., the Cook County Sheriff’s Office took over the investigation from the Winnetka Police Department, which had arrived first and addressed the scene. The county’s detective unit arrived at 8:07 p.m.

According to police documents, most of the sheriff’s office’s investigation — including interviewing witnesses, retrieving crash/vehicle data and executing two warrants — was conducted in May. The department received the driver’s toxicology results on June 24 and the victims’ autopsy results on July 31, documents show.

A report from the Winnetka Police Department was submitted to the county on Aug. 14, and the county’s final crash reconstruction report was filed on Aug. 15, when the department recommended the case’s closure.

During the investigation, documents show, the sheriff’s department obtained warrants to search the Cherokee and to obtain the driver’s medical records.

Within hours of the crash, the driver consented to and underwent medical and neurological testing at Evanston Hospital. Six days later, May 8, the hospital provided the sheriff’s office with a report that “did not rule out a seizure” and contained the negative results of an initial drug and toxicology screening. The testing of the driver showed no signs of alcohol or recreational drugs.

The driver’s blood sample was sent to the Illinois State Police’s forensics laboratory for further testing, the results of which were received on June 24 and confirmed the initial reporting from Evanston Hospital.

The Cherokee was transported on May 2 to the sheriff’s department’s garage in Maywood, where technicians retrieved data from the vehicle’s airbag control module and electronic data recorder. According to the data report provided on May 5, five seconds before the crash the Cherokee was traveling 30 mph with the driver applying 13% pressure on the accelerator.

Then, the report says, the driver’s foot came off the accelerator and remained off the accelerator for the four seconds until the Cherokee came to a stop. During that time, the vehicle’s speed decreased to 15 mph, according to the report.

A witness to the incident — the neighbor walking his dogs — reported that he “did not hear braking” prior to the crash.

Immediately following the crash, according to two witness accounts, the passenger exited the vehicle while the driver did not.

The county medical examiner’s office ruled that Samadi’s and Sigary’s deaths were “accidental,” according to the investigation documents, and the sheriff department’s crash reconstruction report concluded that “no reckless operation (of the vehicle) is apparent.”

To conclude the investigation report, the sheriff’s department wrote that the Cherokee’s driver “had an apparent medical episode (seizure) that caused her to involuntarily lose control of the vehicle causing [the passenger] to attempt to steer the vehicle to avoid an accident. … There were no observations that [the driver] appeared intoxicated at the scene” and in followup medical testing “no evidence of alcohol or drug intoxication was detected.”

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