A 17-year-old boy being followed by police sped through six stop signs and clipped a car before striking three men crossing a street in the Avalon Park neighborhood, killing one of the men who was celebrating his 32nd birthday, according to prosecutors.
Dorian Williams then crashed into a porch at 83rd Street and Blackstone Avenue, crawled out a broken window of the 2013 Jetta he had been driving and ran away Tuesday night, prosecutors said. He was found hiding in a backyard a block away and charged with reckless homicide, aggravated DUI and leaving the scene of an accident.
Criminal Court Judge James Brown on Friday ordered Williams held on $500,000 bail.
Police say Eugene Ratliff was walking to a corner gas station with two friends before going out to celebrate his birthday when Williams' car struck them about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
A few minutes earlier, officers had spotted Williams running a stop sign on 82nd Street and turned on their flashing lights and began chasing him, prosecutors said. They turned their lights off when speeds reached 50 mph, but continued to follow him as he ran four more stop signs, according to prosecutors.
Williams turned right onto Blackstone, sped through another stop sign and struck a Pontiac Sunfire that was braking to avoid getting hit, prosecutors said. Williams then hit Ratliff and his two friends, a 21-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman, authorities said.
After the crash, Williams had his blood drawn and a urine sample taken, and he tested positive for marijuana, prosecutors said. Police also found marijuana in the center console of the Jetta.
Ratliff was pronounced dead at 9:41 p.m. Tuesday at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
The woman suffered a broken hip and fractured pelvis, authorities said. The man was treated at a hospital and released. The driver of the other vehicle was also treated and released.
The killed man's mother, Carolyn Ratliff, in a phone interview from Michigan City, Ind. Friday afternoon, said she was struggling to understand what happened to her son, an aspiring artist who lived with his "favorite aunt'' on the South Side.
"I am somewhat relieved,'' she said of the charges filed against Williams. "But that's not enough,'' she added. "We're still trying to figure this out.''
The day of Ratliff's death, she had called to wish him a happy birthday and left him a message on his voice mail. She recalled that his sister had gotten up about 5:30 a.m. to get ready for school and had also sent him a birthday message, by text.
"He texted her back at 11:38 a.m. saying: 'I love you, sis,''' said his mother.
Ratliff graduated from Dunbar High School and recently worked side jobs in factories, handyman work, and helping people move. But his true passion was art, his mother said.
"He was an artist,'' she said.
During high school, he entered an art contest and won first place, receiving classes at the Art Institute and $200. The winning work was made of pasted-together red construction paper, a scene of children playing basketball. It hung in Chicago's City Hall for one year but was lost in a move, she said.
"The ceremony was at Planet Hollywood,'' she remembered.
Recently, his focus was sketching portraits using pencil. He'd recently been working on one of his grandmother, a gift for her birthday, coming up in January.
Carolyn Ratliff said Ratliff had many friends, was single, and didn't want to live in Michigan City, Ind. because he thought it was "boring'' and "shut down too early,'' she said.
She spoke to him for the last time last week. "He was in a good mood.''
He is survived by a daughter, age 10, who lives in Chicago with her mother.
"He was a cheerful person, hardworking and very concerned for other people,'' his mother said. "He was playful, smart and loving.''
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