Family mourns mom killed in I-57 crash

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Updated: March 9, 2012 8:22AM

Tyris Robertson was asleep Sunday morning when a friend woke him to deliver bad news — his sister, Trineah, 25, of Joliet, had been hurt in a car accident that morning on Interstate 57.

Robertson, 20, rushed to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, daring not to think the worst.

But he soon learned the horrible truth.

“When I got there, my grandmother and mother told me she wasn’t breathing on her own,” he said.

Trineah was pronounced dead at the hospital at 3:55 p.m. She had been a passenger in a vehicle traveling north on I-57 near 111th Street when it was involved in a three-vehicle crash.

“She was always laughing, always smiling,” Robertson said. “She was beautiful inside and out.”

His family has dealt with sudden death before. Trineah’s daughter, Jayneah, was only 6 weeks old when her father was shot and killed in Chicago, Robertson said. The girl, now 5, was with her godparents Sunday when her mother was killed, he said.

He said his sister had wanted to be an interior designer when she was younger, but she recently had decided to become a teacher. She was taking classes at Ivy Tech Community College in Northwest Indiana and had a job as an aide at Trinity Services in Joliet.

“She was very driven and self-motivated, very determined,” Robertson said of his sister. “She was one who would never give up. ... She played the big sister role for everybody.”

Illinois State Police said the accident was caused when a Volkswagen Phaeton attempted to pass Trineah’s GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle on the right shoulder.

A friend of Trineah’s, who was driving the Yukon, told police she lost control, and the SUV traveled across the northbound lanes and struck a concrete median barrier on the left shoulder.

Robertson said the family was told that the accident was caused by vehicles drag racing behind the Yukon.

No further information on the crash was available Tuesday, said state police Master Sgt. Robert Satkiewicz.