JOLIET —The Joliet Police Department announced on Friday that a 21-year-old motorist from Joliet is facing felony charges in connection with a wreck last December along Ridge Road that ended the life of a 77-year-old Minooka driver.
On Friday, Joliet police announced that Naren Vasquez-Torres was arrested and taken and to the Will County Jail. Vasquez’s charges are failure to report an accident involving personal injury or death.
Joliet police spokesman Dwayne English provided the following narrative of events leading up to this week’s arrest of Vasquez-Torres:
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Back on December 20, 2023, at 11:59 a.m., the officers responded to Ridge Road and Jones Road for a crash with injuries.
A GMC Acadia driven by Vasquez-Torres was westbound on Jones Road approaching Ridge Road. It is believed that Vasquez-Torres disregarded the stop sign and collided into a Ford Fiesta that was southbound on Ridge Road, driven by Marvin Lehnert, 77, of Minooka.
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Following the collision, Vasquez-Torres ran from his damaged vehicle into a nearby subdivision without rendering aid or notifying authorities about the crash. A short time later, Vasquez-Torres was located in the 500 block of Cahokia Street.
Lehnert was taken to Ascension St Joseph Medical Center by the Joliet Fire Department with life-threatening injuries. Lehnert was moved to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood where he died during the morning of December 22, 2023.
As for Vasquez-Torres, he was taken to Ascension St Joseph Medical Center with non-life- threatening injuries.
According to Sgt. English: following an expansive investigation of this crash, investigators obtained a Kendall County arrest warrant on October 3, for one count of failure to report an accident involving personal injury or death for Vasquez-Torres.
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Vasquez-Torres was placed into custody at his house in the 600 block of Garnsey Avenue on Wednesday, at 7:58 a.m. He was processed at the Joliet Police Department and transferred to the Will County Adult Detention Facility.
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