By Bill Bird
The Chicago Sun-Times
DuPAGE, Ill. — When Kevin A. McCartney left the party early that October morning, his friend Gregory M. Hoctor was in the passenger seat of his car.
When McCartney returned to the party a little later, he was alone, saying Hoctor had stolen his car.
But Hoctor was really lying mortally wounded inside the wreckage of McCartney’s black, 1998 Volkswagen GTI, left there by McCartney after he smashed the car into a tree.
That’s how DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin described the events of Oct. 5, 2009, as McCartney was charged this week with failure to report an accident involving death.
Berlin said that when the 21-year-old Carbondale resident crashed into the tree in Wheaton, he abandoned his friend instead of getting help.
“The allegations against Mr. McCartney are just unthinkable,” Berlin said in a statement. “Instead of helping his friend, he allegedly returned to the party, leaving his friend at the scene of the crash to die.”
Around 3:30 a.m. that day, the car left Durfee Road just west of Seneca Drive and slammed into a tree, Deputy Wheaton Police Chief Thomas E. Meloni said. McCartney, the driver, walked away without calling police or paramedics to the scene, police said.
Hoctor, 18, of Wheaton, was later discovered unconscious inside the wreckage, Meloni said. He was taken to Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, where he died late that afternoon.
Police concluded Hoctor wasn’t driving the car when it crashed, Meloni said, and the investigation led them to McCartney.
Hoctor was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was a 2009 graduate of Wheaton-Warrenville South High School. He had been planning to enlist in the U.S. Marines at the time of his death.
Court records indicated McCartney has two other traffic-related cases pending against him. He was arrested in October 2010 by Lombard police on charges of driving without insurance and improper use of evidence of registration or certificate of title; and in March by College of DuPage police on charges of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and failure to signal when turning, records indicate.
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