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LAKE COUNTY, Ill. - A Wisconsin man was found dead inside a submerged truck in the Des Plaines River Thursday night.
At about 7:30 p.m., Lake County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to a residence in the 36500 block of North Route 41 in unincorporated Gurnee for a report of a pickup truck that was found submerged in the Des Plaines River.
Upon arrival, deputies located the truck that was partially submerged. The driver inside the truck was pronounced dead.
According to initial findings, the homeowner, upon returning home, noticed tire tracks in the yard. Following these tracks, he traced them to the river, where he found a 2016 Toyota Tacoma. Upon running the license plate, sheriff’s telecommunicators discovered that the vehicle had evaded a local police department on Wednesday around 9:45 p.m., approximately 1.5 miles away.
Additionally, the vehicle had been reported as a wrong-way driver on Wednesday at 3:40 a.m., in the vicinity of Route 173 and Kilbourne Road.
Sheriff’s crash investigators are currently determining the time of the crash and its cause. The driver of the Toyota has been identified as a 79-year-old man from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
The Lake County Coroner’s Office was called to the scene, and an autopsy is pending.
The crash remains under investigation by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office Technical Crash Investigations Team.