Fines assessed of unlicensed driver who injured police officer
BY BILL BIRD wbird@stmedianetwork.com March 12, 2013 9:40PM
Cesar Silva, 40, has been ordered to pay $925 in fines and legal fees for crashing his vehicle into a Naperville police squad car and injuring a police officer. | Courtesy of Naperville Police Department
Updated: April 16, 2013 3:15PM
An unlicensed driver from Naperville’s far northwest side has been ordered to pay $925 in fines and court costs for crashing his vehicle into a Naperville police squad car and injuring a police officer.
Cesar Silva, 40, was assessed $300 on a charge of driving without a valid license; $300 on a count of failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident/driving too fast for conditions; and $325 for improper passing of an emergency vehicle, according to records on file in DuPage County Circuit Court.
Records showed Silva pleaded guilty to all three counts in the Wheaton Field Court. Judge Mary E. O’Connor on Feb. 28 accepted his pleas and imposed the penalties.
Silva lives on the 1500 block of Fairway Drive, in the Green of Country Lakes area of Naperville. He was arrested about 8:48 a.m. Jan. 26, after crashing his vehicle into a police car near Burke Court and Fairway Drive, a short distance south and east of his home.
Police Sgt. Lou Cammiso said an officer was investigating a crash at the intersection when his squad car was hit by Silva’s vehicle. “The officer was hurt, but only missed a couple days of work, and is back on the job,” Cammiso wrote in an e-mail.
Cammiso said “blinding sunlight” figured in the crash and another that occurred just over an hour later, and which also involved a Naperville police car.
“A distracted driver” about 10:03 a.m. “rear-ended a squad car that was stopped at a traffic light” at Quincy and Ogden avenues, Cammiso said. No one was hurt in that crash, he said.
The crash scenes were little more than two miles apart.
