21-Year-Old Driver Charged in Fatal Hit -and-Run Turned Self In, Attorney Says

Jacqueline Cummings, 21, of Oak Lawn. | Tinley Park Police

The attorney for the young Oak Lawn woman accused of striking a pedestrian after a concert in Tinley Park last Saturday is speaking out.

Oak Lawn attorney Robert Olson says that his client, Jacqueline Cummings, 21, who has been charged with two felony counts of reckless homicide and failure to report an accident involving a death, as well as several traffic offenses, is devastated about the accident.

“You saw her in court,” Olson told Patch after Cummings’ bond bearing on Wednesday. “She was very emotional.”

Olson said that Cummings and two “underage friends” had attended the Jason Aldean concert at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in Tinley Park. After the concert ended, Cummings was driving down the 19100 block of Oak Park Avenue shortly after midnight July 18, when she fatally struck pedestrian 54-year-old Luisa Domantay, according to the charges.

Police said that Domantay and her boyfriend were also leaving the concert at the time of the accident.

Instead of stopping and helping, Cummings side-swiped a police vehicle that had its emergency lights activated at the scene of another accident, as she fled the area, prosecutors said.

“I can’t imagine what [Domantay’s] family is going through,” Olson said.

Cummings, her attorney insisted, was not driving under the influence. During Cummings’ bond hearing in Bridgeview on Wednesday, prosecutors stated there was no evidence suggesting that alcohol or drugs played a role in the accident.

“Evidently, [Jacqueline] was at the concert,” Olson said. “There were two other girls in the car with her, who I believe may have been underage. The passengers may have been drinking.”

Olson said the “recklessness” in the reckless homicide charge was attributed to the allegation that Cummings had been texting on her cell phone while driving.

Passengers in Cummings’ 2005 Jeep Cherokee told police they saw Cummings “dialing a number” on her cell phone when they “heard a crash,” according to the charges. Olson said Cummings lost her cell phone and doesn’t know where it is.

“Tinley Park police are seeking her cell phone records to show whether she was texting at the exact time of the accident,” the attorney said. “It’s going to be kind of hard to prove she was texting at the exact second of the accident.”

Hours after the accident, Cummings left town for a family vacation in Michigan. When her father mentioned the accident, Olson said the young woman told him what happened. Her father contacted Tinley Park police and then “lawyered up.”

“At that point they contacted me,” Olson said. “She wasn’t arrested. We turned her in to Tinley Park police at 5 p.m. Monday.”

The Tinley Park Police Department announced the felony charges on Wednesday before Cummings’ hearing in Bridgeview later that afternoon.

Olson also said he’s heard of the existence of a dashcam police video showing the fatal pedestrian accident.

“No one has confirmed yet if there is a video,” he said.

The attorney added that he’s been to previous concerts at the Tinley Park venue and understands how accidents can happen.

“The way those exits are, it’s dark and police are at sides of the road with traffic going in all directions,” Olson said. “It hard to see people going across the street especially with cars’ bright lights. People are just running across the street in all directions.”

Olson said that Cummings’ parents bonded their daughter out of jail after Wednesday’s court hearing and is to remain on electronic home monitoring for the foreseeable future.

Cummings, a single mom to a young daughter, was one class away from finishing her associate’s degree at Moraine Valley Community College, and was planning to attend nursing school. All bets are off whether she can continue to go to school, Olson said.

For now, he is focused on keeping his young client from going to prison.