Fire officials say a man suffered only minor injuries after a truck crashed into a tree, causing a large tree limb to smash through the windshield, leaving him trapped near McHenry Sunday evening.
The McHenry Township Fire Protection District and McHenry County Sheriff’s Office responded around 7:15 p.m. Sunday to the area of Moraine Hills State Park, 1510 South River Road in unincorporated McHenry, for a vehicle crash with injuries and entrapment.
Fire crews arrived and found a single-vehicle crash south of the state park in the 1600 block of South River Road, north of Ozinga, according to McHenry Township Fire Protection District Battalion Chief David Harwood.
Harwood said a Chevrolet Silverado 2500 pickup truck left the roadway and struck a large tree along the edge of the roadway.
The impact caused a very large limb to break off from the top of the tree and fall down onto the car.
It crushed the cab of the pickup truck and trapped the driver, who was an adult male in his late 40s or early 50s, inside the vehicle, Harwood said.
The driver did not appear to have life-threatening injuries. He was extricated by firefighters from the car in approximately 10 minutes.
Paramedics transported the driver to Northwestern Medicine Hospital in McHenry.
The truck sustained heavy, extensive damage and it was unsafe to immediately tow due to loose tree limbs hanging above the vehicle, Harwood said.
The McHenry County Division of Transportation was called to cut down the tree.
The sheriff’s office shut down River Road between Moraine Hills State Park Road and Sunset Drive for several hours.
The tree was cleared and the truck was towed, leading to the road being reopened by around 9:45 p.m.
The driver was the sole occupant of the Chevrolet and Harwood said it is unknown what caused him to drive off the roadway, noting that the road conditions were not slick at the time.
The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the cause of the crash.