A West Dundee woman driving down Interstate 90 near Barrington didn’t have much of a chance to avoid the deer that crashed into her family’s van over the Memorial Day weekend.

It came from above.

“We’re two exits from home, and right before (Illinois Route) 59, we’re going under the underpass and then boom out of nowhere it’s like something fell from the sky on top of us,” said Heidi Conner, 37. “Next thing I know I look down, and there is a deer lying next to me in the car, and I think I was just dumbfounded.”

The deer, which a witness said hurtled to the interstate from an overpass, slammed through the windshield of Conner’s vehicle, striking her and her son and ending up with its head in the center console and its body extending into the back seat.

Four of Conner’s children, the youngest of them 5, were with her in the car, but neither she nor any of the kids was seriously hurt.

The deer was killed in the collision, which happened at about noon Sunday.

Joel Samuels was driving behind Conner and said he saw the animal plummet from the Illinois Route 72 overpass. Samuels, 55, said he wasn’t sure what he had seen until he pulled over to help.

“I didn’t even know it was an animal, it happened that fast,” Samuels said on Tuesday. “I was absolutely shocked. Here it is, the middle of the day, and a deer falling from where? An overpass that construction’s going on? I was perplexed. I couldn’t believe it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Conner slowed and drove across three lanes of traffic with the deer still in the car before she was able to pull over, Samuels said.

Illinois Police state trooper Justin Novarro, who responded to the accident, said in a statement that the accident was “somewhat of an anomaly.”

Conner, who was returning to the northwest suburbs from Tennessee, was driving at about 70 mph at the time of the crash. Her 13-year-old son, who was in the passenger seat, was scratched up and she suffered some bumps and bruises from the impact of the deer, but she considers the family’s survival a miracle.

Doctors and nurses at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, where Conner and her son were taken after the accident, “ just can’t believe it,” Conner said.

“They kept coming into the room and looking at the pictures,” she said. “In fact, if I didn’t have the pictures, I don’t think anybody would believe what happened.”

tgoldenstein@tribune.com



