GODFREY • Rescuers arriving at a house where an SUV ran through two rooms here Sunday night asked neighbors if they had any idea where the homeowner might be.
Then they found Marlin “Bud” Bushnell dead, trapped in debris under the vehicle. The driver had fled, and a suspect was arrested later outside a bar. He was held in the Madison County Jail pending charges.
Bushnell, 73, a widower, was believed to have been sitting in a chair in his living room when a full-size SUV crashed through the front door about 10:45 p.m. and went all the way into the dwelling in the 100 block of Saturn Drive, officials said.
Eric Cranmer, shift commander for the Godfrey Fire Protection District, said the home had substantial damage. “It went over the front concrete porch, basically through the front door, through the living room and into a bedroom,” he explained.
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“It took us a little while to make sure there was someone home,” Cranmer said. “The car was in the living room and into the first bedroom. All the debris and furniture was underneath the car. We removed the debris and found him under the car.”
Bushnell lived there by himself; his wife died in 2007.
Capt. Mike Dixon, chief of detectives for the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, said authorities were still looking into details, such as how fast the vehicle had been going.
The suspect had gotten into a quarrel with someone at a nearby home, in the 200 block of Mercury Drive, officials said, grabbed the keys to a relative’s vehicle and drove off.
Sheriff’s deputies, who police Godfrey under contract, received a call about the disturbance at 10:42 p.m. About five minutes later, when they got to the home on Mercury Drive, they received a 911 call about the crash on Saturn Drive.
About 40 minutes after that, police arrested the suspected driver on the parking lot of Beer Barrel Pub, on Montclair Avenue. They have not revealed his name or age.
An accident reconstruction investigator with the sheriff’s office and a crime scene technician from the Illinois State Police were investigating.
Christine Chaikowsky, who lives next door to Bushnell, said cars speed along Saturn Drive all the time. The street in front of their homes curves, and some don’t make the turn in time.
“We’ve had people miss that turn before and wipe out and hit our car,” she said. Sunday night’s incident, she added, “makes me very angry because they fly around that corner.”
Chaikowsky said Bushnell and his late wife had built their home more than 40 years ago and were one of the first families in the neighborhood. She said Bushnell had been well-liked.
“He was very, very sweet,” she said. “He’d give you the last dollar in his pocket.”
She said he did small-engine repair work in his garage and had driven a school bus for many years, after retiring from another job. She wasn’t sure what that work had been.
