DUI charge in fatal car crash at lake
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A man who was behind the wheel when a car plunged into a lake, killing his girlfriend’s three children trapped inside, has been charged with driving under the influence. A police officer collects stuffed dolls Wednesday morning from the bank of Clinton Lake in Clinton, Ill. Authorities are still investigating and have not determined whether the plunge was an accident, or even why the car was next to the lake, Sheriff Roger Massey said. The couple were not launching or retrieving a boat, authorities said. Massey would not say what substance the driver, Maurice Lagrone Jr., 28, allegedly had used. Lagrone also was charged with driving with a suspended license. Lagrone and his girlfriend, Amanda Hamm, 28, escaped the car after it went off a boat ramp Tuesday evening, but Hamm’s three children were trapped inside, Massey said. Hamm called 911 from a pay phone and emergency workers were at the scene in about five minutes, but Christopher Hamm, 6, Austin Brown, 3, and Kyleigh Hamm, 23 months, died. Authorities said a special prosecutor will be assigned because Hamm’s mother works for the state’s attorney. Neighbors at the apartment complex where Hamm and Lagrone lived together in Clinton said that she was a loving mother who never let her children stray from view and that the couple constantly were outside, playing with the youngsters. The school that Christopher and Austin attended offered counseling to children. And residents in the town of about 7,500 grieved at the restaurant where Hamm worked. “I’m doing OK, if you consider crying in spurts to be OK,” restaurant manager Brenda Fouts told The (Bloomington) Pantagraph. |