Buffalo Grove High School Dismissal Turned Tragic When a Car Left the Roadway on Dundee Road

Around 2,000 students from Buffalo Grove High School were being released into the Dundee Road parking lot at 3:20 on a Tuesday afternoon when a car tried to pull out onto the road. It hit a pole. A staff member who was standing nearby assisting students in safely crossing the busy road as he did every afternoon was struck by the pole. In critical condition, he was taken to the hospital. For over three hours, Dundee Road was closed. After being released for the day, students stood on the sidewalk and observed.

By Wednesday afternoon, the man, who students identified as a security guard who frequently worked crosswalk duty during dismissal, had not been made public. Students were aware that he was a well-known figure during the time of day when the campus shifts from orderly to chaotic, with hundreds of cars arriving at once on a suburban arterial road that wasn’t necessarily built for that volume. Reporters were informed by junior Jethro Woodard and his classmates that the man was there to ensure that vehicles stopped so children could cross. He was responsible for that. When the collision occurred, he was working on it.

Parents received a letter from Principal Jeff Wardle on Tuesday night. It was the kind of letter that no school administrator wants to write: it used tactful language to discuss a traumatic incident, acknowledged that staff and students had seen something serious, and offered advice on the support services that would be available in the coming days. “Several staff and students witnessed this serious accident,” Wardle said. “Traumatic events like this can be upsetting to hear about.” When Buffalo Grove Police returned to the school on Wednesday morning while students were being dropped off, it was an unusual sight and, in a sense, a sign that the community was not progressing this quickly.

A fundraising effort to assist the injured employee had been started by Wednesday afternoon. According to reports, he had a traumatic brain injury. He was described by the organizers of the fundraiser in a way that revealed how well-known he was at the school, not as a supporting character but as someone the students knew, someone who had been a part of the daily routine of arrival and dismissal at a school with 2,000 students for a significant amount of time. It is another matter entirely whether that level of institutional familiarity affects the crash in any way, either legally or practically. Its weight is what is altered.

The non-student driver has been cooperating completely with the investigation. The investigation is being carried out by the Major Crash Assistance Team and the Traffic Unit of the Buffalo Grove Police Department. The cause has not been made public, whether it was a sight line issue at the parking lot exit, a mechanical malfunction, a driver error, or something else. The investigation may reveal a definite contributing factor. It’s also possible that this type of accident is caused by a confluence of factors that, while seemingly controllable on their own, combine to produce a disastrous result.

In these kinds of situations, it seems that the location is more important than it first appears. Dundee Road is a major suburban thoroughfare. Every afternoon, the school parking lot empties onto it at precisely the same time that commuter traffic, parent pickups, and buses are using the street. At a high school the size of Buffalo Grove, dismissal is not a quiet occasion. High vehicle density, foot traffic from students, and distracted drivers making snap decisions are all present during this condensed time. The man who was performing his duties while standing in the middle of it is now in critical condition. Every afternoon, he served the community, which has started a fundraiser and is awaiting updates.