Suburban nurse had front row seat to I-290 blast, survived to talk about it

Дата публикации: 24-06-2026 17:18:58

For hours on June 4, state and federal authorities and the bomb squad didn’t know what they were dealing with.
A blast inside an SUV on the outbound I-290, the driver dead and traffic closed off.
Right there in the Hot Zone was motorist Desiree Mondragon with her toddler son, who were traveling behind the SUV when it blew. They both survived the still unexplained explosion – rattled but unharmed – and now for the first time, she spoke about it with the NBC Chicago investigative team.
“I was driving to the gym…” said Mondragon, a suburban nurse who described what started as a normal day off — until the SUV in front of her blew up.
“I saw all the glass kind of like shatter … and then there was like a trickle of flame that was like above the car,” said Mondragon. “At first, I thought that someone had shot into the car, because of the way that the glass just like shattered. I thought someone had to have shot into it.”
There were no gunshots; but Mondragon, an ER and intensive care nurse, said the driver in this vehicle that exploded was bloodied, not moving and appeared dead.
Beyond the shock, she called 911…her cell phone still displays the moment she notified police of the bizarre incident.
“I saw the driver, only the driver in the car with all the airbags out,” Mondragon told NBC Chicago investigative reporter Chuck Goudie. “That’s when I had seen that the driver had appeared deceased at that time.”
Forty-seven-year-old Jorge Vaca from Cicero was killed when a commercial grade firework shell somehow shot into his chest and exploded as he was driving, senior federal law enforcement officials have told NBC Chicago.
Authorities said they are awaiting a manner of death ruling from the Cook County Medical Examiner. Vaca’s remains are still in the county morgue and the ME has not determined if it was an accident or suicide. The FBI has said no one else was involved in Vaca’s death.
For Mondragon it was a close call frozen in time.
“All the glass flew everywhere,” she said. “That was one thing I was trying to swerve out of the glass that had just compiled all over the floor, or all over, the road.
GOUDIE: “Were you scared?”
MONDRAGON: “I was. It was a moment of shock and fear as to, you know, especially because of my initial thought that someone had shot into it, but it was, I guess I would say, that shock and that fear of the unknown of what it was.”
While most of what happened three weeks ago is known, why it occurred is still not nailed down, according to law enforcement officials.
Regardless, Desiree Mondragon says she finds it remarkable that no others motorists were hurt coming through the hot zone when that SUV blew up.

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