Community Corner

Family Seeks Intersection Changes on 1-year Anniversary of Middle-Schooler's Death

It was one year ago today that Kaylah Lentine, 14, died after getting hit by a pickup truck trying to cross Southwest Highway and Cicero Avenue.

In the year since Kaylah Lentine, 14, has died, her family has searched for the “little signs” of the girl cut down in childhood.

“It doesn’t seem like it has been a year already,” Kaylah’s mother, Krista Wilkinson, said. “We’ve been dreading it, and yet it’s just a day, and every day has been hard.”

One year ago Friday, on May 24, Kaylah was struck by a pickup truck while trying to cross the intersection of Southwest Highway and Cicero Avenue. The Hometown eighth-grader had missed the morning school bus and decided to walk to Oak Lawn-Hometown Middle School, where she was supposed to receive an award.

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The force of the truck hurled her into the air, where she landed on the opposite side of the intersection. She died of her catastrophic injuries the next day at Advocate Christ Medical Center.

An Oak Lawn Police investigation concluded that the driver of the truck was not at fault.

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On Mother’s Day, there was a Kaylah on ‘Long Island Medium,’ the TLC show about a woman who helps families communicate with deceased loved ones.

“I felt like it was a sign. My friend saw it too,” Wilkinson said. “You have to look for the little signs. My dad was walking through the mall and heard two of her favorite songs back to back.”

The 107 videos that she created have also been a comfort to her family, to be savored sparingly, so that there is always something to new to watch the next day.

“It has been the roughest year of my life,” Don Wilkinson, Kaylah’s grandfather, said. “We had so many things in common. She was my protégé.  Through [Students Against Destructive Decisions] she was trying to help her friends and other people.”

The intersection of Southwest Highway and Cicero Avenue is the only intersection between 79th and 115th Streets that does not have a pedestrian crossing light.

Still raw and shell shocked a month after her daughter passed away last year, Krista Wilkinson went before the Oak Lawn Village Board to speak of her loss and ask for safety measures at the corner.

Initially told it would take the Illinois Department of Transportation at least four years to install a pedestrian crossing light and make the intersection ADA-compliant, the family has since learned that work to improve safety at the corner could happen this year. 

Don Wilkinson has been known to stand at the intersection, where a bouquet of yellow artificial flowers has been fastened to the traffic lot pole for the past year, clocking traffic with a radar gun.

“Her teachers and a lot of kids have told us that she had a sense of who she way that was like that of an older adult,” her grandfather said. “She was free and that’s what people admired in her. I know I did.”

Perhaps because it has been a year, the logjam of grief is breaking up a bit, although one never fully recovers from the death of a child. Krista Wilkinson said keeping in contact with Kaylah’s many friends has helped her get through the first year.

“It’s definitely easier to do regular household chores now,” Kaylah’s mother said. “There are new routines. We’ve stayed in touch with her friends. They’re starting to heal and feel happy again. It’s nice to see them moving on but it’s a bit wistful.”

Moments after she was taken off of life support, Kaylah’s organs were donated to seven recipients, a desire she expressed in the weeks leading up to her death.

She also hopes to hear from one of the seven recipients who received Kaylah's organs, a wish Kaylah made known in the weeks before her death.

“I hold out hope that they’ll contact me, at least one of the seven,” Krista Wilkinson said. “They were given a great gift with sadness on our part, I’m looking forward to hearing from them.”

On Friday, Krista Wilkinson plans to take her younger children, 9-year-old twins Jaycee and Delanie, camping, something they were planning to do last year before the accident.

She’s kept herself going this past year setting personal goals, and taking a year off to help Kaylah’s younger brother and sister through their grief.

Wilkinson also expressed her gratitude to Dist. 123 that dedicated a bench in Kaylah’s memory in front of OLHMS on what would have been her 15th birthday on May 3.

“We’re trying to get something done with the intersection,” Krista Wilkinson said. “”I’ve been trying to keep busy with ways to remember her.”


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