Argument leads to four-car crash

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — An argument between two passengers in a Ford Explorer early Sunday morning ended in a four-vehicle crash in Madison County that sent seven people to the hospital.

A news release from the Illinois State Police gave the following account of the accident.

Two passengers in the Explorer were arguing just after 3 a.m. while traveling south on Interstate 55/70 near Illinois 111 when one of them, a passenger in the front seat, decided she wanted to fight the other woman on the right shoulder of the road. Near milepost 6.8, she jerked the steering wheel to the right, which sent the Explorer off the roadway.

The driver then turned the wheel back left but overcorrected and the vehicle started to roll before a Hyundai Sonata and GMC Envoy struck it. A Toyota pickup truck then struck the Hyundai.

Cori Jarmon, a 33-year-old St. Louis resident, was driving the Explorer and was seriously injured. She and the other two women in that vehicle, 28-year-old Anna Jarmon, of Maryland Heights, Mo., and 25-year-old Christina Kelly, of St. Louis, were transported to St. Louis University Hospital.

It was not clear from the news release whether it was Anna Jarmon or Kelly who steered the SUV off of the highway in order to fight.

Michael Adams, a 22-year-old man from Swansea, was driving the Hyundai. He and his passenger, 34-year-old Michael Lively, of Collinsville, were unconscious after the crash and taken by helicopter to St. Louis hospitals.

Alicia Cuiriz, 29, and Diana Perez, 20, were traveling in the Envoy, and the two West Chicago women received minor injuries and refused treatment.

The 26-year-old Granite City man who was driving the Toyota was not injured, but he was arrested for drunken driving.