Police in Zion, Illinois, are looking into a troubling video that appears to show a woman on TikTok live when she hit and killed a man on Monday night. The video has people talking about how dangerous it is to use your phone while driving.
According to TMZ, the crash happened around 5:30 p.m. in the Chicago area. Darren Lucas, 59, who lived in nearby Beach Park, was hit by a car and later died at the hospital from his injuries. The 43-year-old woman who was driving stayed at the scene and talked to police.
Someone recorded the TikTok livestream, and it shows the woman talking to her phone when a loud bang happens. Right after that, she says, “F***, f***, f*** … I just hit somebody.” The video cuts off quickly after that. You can hear a child asking what happened and someone else checking if the driver is alright.
This is what happens when you livestream behind the wheel
The Lake and McHenry County Scanner was the first to report the story. Lt Paul Kehrli from the Zion police said they don’t think drugs or alcohol had anything to do with the crash. The Lake county state’s attorney’s office said they know about the video but can’t talk about it yet because they’re still investigating.
The TikTok user went by the name “Tea_Tyme_3” but has changed her username since then. She made her account private and removed the part of her profile where she said she was from Zion, Illinois. Someone on Reddit who says they watched the livestream when it happened wrote that the driver wasn’t watching the road. Instead, she was “reading comments and grinning at her phone.”
That same Reddit user talked about how upset they were after seeing what happened. They wrote, “It feels like I accidentally witnessed the moment someone’s life was taken and now I can’t stop thinking about the victim, and how avoidable it was.”
They said they keep hearing the sound of the crash in their head. This sad event adds to other recent tragedies in Illinois, including a gubernatorial candidate who lost four family members in a helicopter crash.
Research has shown for years that using your phone while driving makes crashes much more likely to happen. This awful situation is just another example of why that’s true, much like other tragic accidents involving young drivers.
Chris King is Lucas’s son-in-law. He told the Lake and McHenry County Scanner that hearing about the video made his family “hold our loss tighter to our hearts.” He also said, “We … will continue to pray for what the driver must be going through. We are trying to find our ways to live, without someone we cherished so much.”
Published: Nov 12, 2025 06:15 pm