SALINE CO.—Now HERE’S something you don’t see every day.
The two-vehicle wreck that occurred at the intersection of Lover’s Lane and Highway 13 yesterday (03.05.13), west of Harrisburg just past IYC, not only involved a former mayor’s kid, but also involved TWO citations for DUI-drugs.
The site was the intersection of 13 going onto Lover’s Lane, which can be seen as the road going south on center left of the photo.
According to Illinois State Police Dist. 19 out of Carmi who worked the wreck, which occurred yesterday afternoon (we’re still getting specifics on this, but we understand it was shortly after 4 p.m.), Jason Morse, 37, driver of the tan Toyota you can see in the below photo, was westbound in 13 when he pulled into oncoming eastbound traffic in an attempt to turn onto Lover’s Lane. James R. Eudy, 59, driving his 2010 Dodge pickup (vehicle on the back of the wrecker), was eastbound on 13 and the two vehicles impacted at the intersection.
Morse’s car being towed; Eudy’s truck up on the wrecker.
It might’ve been a case of the obvious, as Morse, son of former Harrisburg mayor Ron Morse, was cited for Failure to Yield at the intersection…except that upon examination of the drivers, ISP determined that there was a little something more going on, ultimately resulting in both Morse and Eudy being cited for Driving Under the Influence of Drugs…which is part of why it took so long for ISP to get info out, and why we didn’t have the wreck information last night, even four hours after it incident.
We’re still learning why and how ISP came to the conclusion that both drivers were allegedly DUI-D, and when we get that, we’ll hopefully have it for the print version.
Regular readers will recall the debacle that emerged a couple of years ago surrounding Jason Morse and his employment at the City of Harrisburg water department, which information didn’t appear here at the website, but was only included in the print version. Morse has a long history with alcohol and drugs, and was noted as one of the people involved in the Gulley girls’ underage strip teasing activity at a closed bar in Harrisburg many years ago. Eudy doesn’t have much of a history to speak of; it will be interesting to see how both citations pan out, as DUI-drugs can only be alleged at the time of citation, and proven much much later (as long as up to 90 days) after blood draws have to prove there was some kind of intoxicating or disabling compound in the driver’s blood per the overworked state labs that conduct the tox exam.
We’ll keep up with it and see…in the meantime, be safe driving that area out there, as there have been far too many accidents in that vicinity since the bypass has been opened and people have to drive what feels like a big circle outside of Harrisburg just to get going west of town.