NBC Chicago
Emergency personnel at the scene where a car crashed into a creek in Illinois, killing four teens.
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
Four Chicago-area teens were killed when their car plunged into a rain-swollen creek early Tuesday -- the latest in a string of horrific traffic accidents involving young people.
The toll -- 15 dead in three major accidents since Sunday -- underscores how dangerous driving can be for teenagers. Crash injuries are the leading cause of death for people ages 13-19, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, even though deadly crashes have been on the decline for decades.
The Illinois victims -- two boys and two girls, ages 15 to 17 -- left their homes Monday evening and never returned, NBCChicago.com reported. Their bodies were found in an overturned car in Forked Creek near Wilmington, about an hour from Chicago, about 7:30 a.m.
Will County Sheriff's spokesman Ken Kaupas said it appears the accident was weather-related.
"There may have been water coming over the roadway just before the bridge," he said. "We've had a tremendous amount of runoff and melting as everyone in the area has experienced, and that may have contributed to this horrific crash."
The grim discovery came amid word of another devastating wreck in Texas that left five teenagers dead over the weekend.
Three boys and two girls, who were sisters, were killed when their Chevy SUV ran a stop sign and collided with a fuel tanker on Sunday afternoon in Dumas, about 45 miles north of Amarillo.
The truck driver, identified by The Associated Press as Ezequiel Garcia, was burned over much of his body and was in critical condition.
That same day, six Ohio teens were killed when an SUV sped off a stretch of road known as dead man's curve and flipped into a pond.
The State Highway Patrol revealed Tuesday that the driver, Alexis Cayson, 19, did not have a valid license. The owner of the vehicle says it was stolen and it's not clear how the teens ended up in it.
Cayson was killed, along with five boys ages 14 to 19. Two boys survived by smashing a rear window and swimming to safety. One of them told police the driver may have been going 80 mph as she rounded a bend in the two-lane road in Warren, about 60 miles from Cleveland.
?The car had jerked out of control,? another survivor, Brian Henry, 18, told Youngstown TV station WYTV.??I don?t know if she did it on purpose, or how fast she was going.?
Teen deaths from car crashes are on the decline in the United States, dropping from 8,748 in 1975 to 3,115 in 2010, according to the insurance institute, but the risk of being in an accident is three times higher for teens than older drivers.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published on Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:25 PM EDT
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