MILWAUKEE — Sunday night’s deadly crash near 60th and Fond du Lac Avenue is just the latest in a long string of reckless driving crashes in the city. While this one is arguably the most tragic, leaving five dead including a 1-year-old, the intersection itself is not known to be an issue, according to state crash data.
According to the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Laboratory, since 2010, the mile stretch of Fond du Lac Avenue from W Armitage Avenue to W Maxwell Place has seen four people killed and 25 seriously injured, not including Sunday night's crash. This is the first deadly crash at the actual intersection since at least 2001. However, that doesn’t mean the people who frequent the area feel comfortable here.
“We got busy drivers,” Mialice Dailey of Milwaukee said. “We got speeders. We got baseliners.”
“Speeding, running red lights,” Aaron Sellers of Milwaukee said. “They think they’re in a rush to go somewhere. It ain’t that serious to go nowhere.”
For Sellers, he recently helped an elderly woman cross the street. He says, she even offered him money for doing so, which he declined. He felt the need to help her cross the street because it’s something he even has trouble with from time to time.
“Drive safe,” Sellers said. “Drive cautious of other people. Please, slow down.”
It was more of the same from businesses and homeowners in the area. One homeowner told the I-Team off-camera that his fence and the front of his house had been destroyed by vehicles over the years. Despite his best efforts at keeping his yard prim, some divots created by two-ton terrors will never be removed.
Around the corner, businesses dot the corridor of Fond du Lac Avenue with a front row to the havoc. J’s Laundry caught Sunday night’s crash on its surveillance cameras and just a month prior, it was the surveillance cameras on the inside of the business that caught a vehicle barging into its front windows.
Watch: A car crashes into J's Laundry
While the serious crash statistics may not paint the whole picture, the debris left behind at nearly every corner of the intersection create an abstract view of the history left behind by each crash. Plastic pieces and glass granules tell a story of driver desolation which puts every single resident’s life in peril.
“It’s kind of bad when people get to driving crazy,” Sellers said. “They have to drive cautiously for people crossing the street and all that.”
“Be more careful,” Naenae Newson said. “It be kids out here and everything.”
And this time, it’s the kids who fell victim to the tragedy. Four of the five people who died in this crash were under 18 years old. Since 2017, 30 children have died in car crashes.
“If y’all seeing y’all keep getting in crashes and everything, y’all should think about it,” Dailey said. “I think about it all the time. It’s plenty of people speeding. If y’all speeding, why wouldn’t y’all get t-boned? I don’t wish it on anybody but it’s common sense. Everyone in Milwaukee speeding, of course you’re going to crash.”
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