Eugene Logan's family and friends are still in shock from the accident and remembering him Saturday night.
Logan was doing what he regularly did, picking up his two friends and neighbors from their job in LaGrange. On the way home, his car ran out of gas. It wouldn't start up again, even after walking to a nearby gas station for fuel. Saturday night ABC7 Eyewitness News spoke to the other person pushing the car alongside Logan.
Making children laugh was all Logan ever wanted to do.
"I face paint. He makes balloons. I never met a man who could come into my life and turn me into a clown but this one did," said Logan's fiance Carolyn Foster.
His partner of seven years, Foster is still in shock Saturday evening trying to come to terms with the early Saturday morning accident that took the 43-year-old Logan's life as he and a friend he had gone to pick up from work were trying to push their stalled vehicle out of the way. Logan's truck had run out of gas, and wouldn't start even after he'd walked to a nearby gas station for a can full of fuel.
"We turned around pushing like this and all of a sudden a guy said 'look out' and boom. My hands were still up like that but I didn't see the truck anymore," said Tommy Gardner.
The accident happened at LaGrange Road and 63rd Street in south west suburban Hodgkins. Police there say it was around 1 a.m. when a moving vehicle crashed into Logan's truck, but they have not yet determined what led to the crash. Gardner says, they had their flashers on and the driver should have seen them.
"Everybody else was going around us. I don't know what he was doing, on the phone or whatever," Gardner said. "After he hit us and jumped out he said 'where did you all come from?' I said 'we were right here. Pushing the truck up the hill.'"
In remembering him tonight, his fiance says Logan, who got his GED two years ago, had his share of troubles, but had successfully turned his life around in recent years.
"We had rough times, but he always had something to make me laugh about. He was just all out good," Foster said.
Hodgkins Police are still investigating the crash. The driver who caused it has not been issued any citations as of yet.
