The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Suburban Teens’ Make Headlines

Posted on | July 28, 2026 | No Comments

Everything is ultimately about media bias. What would be the point of any conservative blogging, if the news media were remotely objective? And so it is that I encountered this headline:

Four suburban teens killed in Chicago crash; victim’s father questions police pursuit

The phrase “four suburban teens” immediately makes you think of some John Hughes movie from the 1980s, as if Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald went joyriding in Chicago, but alas, no:

A 14-year-old girl who was preparing to start high school was among four teenagers killed in a high-speed crash Sunday morning in Bedford Park, according to Chicago police and family members.
The teens, who ranged in age from 14 to 19 years old, were all from Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs. Police said the driver of the pickup truck was fleeing law enforcement just after 2:15 a.m., when the vehicle left the roadway near Cicero Avenue and 69th Street and plunged into a train yard below.
Surveillance video showed the vehicle flying off the bridge and into the air.
Among those killed was Vanessa Morales. Her family said she would have attended freshman orientation at Palatine High School on Monday.
“She was so excited. She was going to get her tablet and meet her teachers today,” Morales’ father said in Spanish.
Chicago police said officers were responding early Sunday to a report of an unidentified suspect pointing a weapon at another person while in a vehicle. Police said the vehicle matched the description of the pickup truck in which Morales and the others were riding.
According to police, officers attempted a traffic stop and briefly pursued the truck before ending the chase. Police said the crash occurred shortly after Illinois State Police made their own attempt to stop the vehicle. . . .
Woodstock High School said one of those killed graduated from Woodstock High School last May and another last attended Woodstock High School about two years ago. . . .
Another graduated from Crystal Lake Central High School.

In addition to Vanessa Morales, whose father doesn’t speak English, the other “suburban teens” killed in the crash were identified as Cristofer Lopez Montan, 19, and Yuarem Garcia-Pena, 18, both of Woodstock, and Yaritza Martinez Villeda, 17, of Crystal Lake. So these kids weren’t exactly the cast of Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink. On the one hand you can understand that, on those rare occasions when the perpetrators of crime in Chicago aren’t “urban youth,” the local media are eager to convey the message that it wasn’t the usual suspects this time.

On the other hand, what’s up in the Chicago suburbs? Woodstock and Crystal Lake are both in McHenry County, while Palantine, where Vanessa Morales lived, is on the north end of Cook County.

Map showing McHenry County, Illinois (upper left)

It’s 60 miles from Woodstock, Illinois, to downtown Chicago, so to call Woodstock a “suburb” of Chicago is kind of like saying Bowling Green, Kentucky, is a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. Meanwhile, what do we know about McHenry County? In 1980, it had fewer than 150,000 residents, but now has more than 300,000. Also, according to Wikipedia, “McHenry county has the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites amongst the five collar counties of Chicago (McHenry, Lake, DuPage, Kane, and Will).” Comparatively speaking, it’s the Vanilla Valhalla.

Nevertheless, there has been demographic change in McHenry County, which went from being 97% white in 1980 — when Hispanics were just 2% of the county’s population — to 77% white in 2020, when Hispanics had increased to 15%. That doesn’t explain why these four teenagers were riding around downtown Chicago at 2 a.m., allegedly brandishing a firearm and leading cops on a high-speed chase, but would any white kids from McHenry County be in downtown Chicago at that hour?

Probably not. The whole point of being from McHenry County is to be far, far away from the kind of dangers that lurk in Chicago. The media don’t want to talk about any of this stuff, which is why the burden falls on me.



 

Category: Chicago, Crime, Illinois, Media Bias

Comments

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin