\nWhen:<\/strong> 4 p.m. <\/span>March 20<\/p>\n \nWhere:<\/strong> Carrigan’s Pub, 5506 N Main St., East Peoria.<\/p>\n \nCost:<\/strong> $6 donation at door. Event also includes raffles and a silent auction, plus prizes and karaoke.<\/p>\n A heartbeat later: BANG! A car driven by an allegedly drunken driver bashed Lenning from behind, hurtling her forward – onto the unforgiving earth and into an uncertain future.<\/p>\n Seven months later, Lenning remains unsure of her next step – literally. She continues to rehab her crumpled body, all the while trying to maintain a household of her partner and three young kids.<\/p>\n She isn’t sure if she’ll ever regain full use of her limbs, or how she’ll pay $600,000 in medical bills. But she knows one thing: She is glad her motherly instinct kicked him that fateful night. She shudders at the notion as to what might’ve happened if he’d stayed alongside the road.<\/p>\n “He would have died,” Lenning says.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lenning grew up in Henry County, but her family moved to Limestone Township when she was in high school. To have a baby (Keane, now 6), she dropped out, but later got her G.E.D.<\/p>\n Lenning took a job with Stanley Steemer carpet cleaner. There, she had a boss named Richard Hammer II. They began to date and eventually they bought a house (in his name) in Chillicothe. Unmarried, they have two children together: Kylie, 9 months; and Kadence, 23 months.<\/p>\n By last summer, Lenning had quit her job to attend Illinois Central College. She aimed to get a degree in child development, so she could work with autistic children.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, every summer night, Lenning and Keane would take a walk.<\/p>\n “That was like the mommy-son time. It was our<\/i> time.”<\/p>\n Usually, they’d be joined by their pit bull, Gremlin. At bedtime, the pet often would curl up with Keane.<\/p>\n “She was a pit bull, but she was not mean,” Lenning says. “They were best friends.”<\/p>\n On July 24, the threesome went for a walk. About 8:30 p.m., they ambled along the grass adjacent to the 1300 block of North Santa Fe Avenue. Keane, wearing a bright-yellow Sponge Bob shirt, was closest to the pavement, a pace or two away. The white dog was next to him; on the other side of the pet was Lenning, clad in a white top.<\/p>\n The area is rife with children playing all the time, even at that hour, and mishaps are rare. Still, Lenning decided to take the precaution of trading spots with Keane, leaving her closest to the roadway.<\/p>\n Just after the repositioning, she felt a sudden, horrible blast. A ’90s Pontiac Grand Am – allegedly moving 51 to 55 mph in the 30-mph zone – clipped her legs from behind. The impact shot Lenning out of her shoes.<\/p>\n The car’s hood briefly scooped up her body, with her head smashing the windshield. She then flew forward onto to the hard turf.<\/p>\n “The next thing I recall, I was in the ambulance,” Lenning says. ” … The damage to the car looked like it had hit a deer.”<\/p>\n Later, Keane would say that his mother, realizing the approach of the car, pushed him to safety.<\/p>\n “I don’t know if that was me, or the impact of the car pushing me,” Lenning says.<\/p>\n The car hit Lenning with such force, a rear-view mirror broke loose. It flew sideways, clanging the boy in the head as he crashed to the ground. Still, he maintained consciousness, allowing him to see his mother’s injuries.<\/p>\n Bones in all four of her limbs had broken, with those in both legs piercing through skin. Blood oozed from the wounds. Road rash ravaged her arms, from her skidding across the ground and broken glass.<\/p>\n As mother and son lay there, the car sped off. Several witnesses dashed to the scene.<\/p>\n “They said I was awake the whole time, but I don’t remember that,” Lenning says. “They said I complained I couldn’t breathe.”<\/p>\n An ambulance soon arrived and put Lenning inside. Keane was moved inside, too. Paramedics, afraid he might’ve also been hit by the car, strapped him onto a body board.<\/p>\n To comfort him, paramedics taped his hand to his unconscious mother’s hand. The tactic didn’t work, as Lenning learned as soon as she regained consciousness inside the ambulance.<\/p>\n “He was just screaming,” she recalls.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, she started to beg paramedics: “Don’t let me die. I have three kids.”<\/p>\n The paramedics told her not to worry: No one would die that night.<\/p>\n They were right. Except for Gremlin. The dog, too, had been bashed by the car. Unlike Lenning, Gremlin had no chance. As the ambulance sped off, the boy’s dog lay behind, lifeless.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the hospital, Lenning soon underwent the first of six surgeries over the next several months. All four limbs sport a slathering of crimson scars – dots and slashes from skidding and scalpels. Rods and bolts support her legs and arms.<\/p>\n “I have metal in every part of my body,” she says with a grim smile.<\/p>\n After the first surgery, her mangled limbs were put in long casts.<\/p>\n “I couldn’t move,” she says.<\/p>\n After two weeks in intensive care, Lenning was moved to a nursing home to begin a long recovery. After three months, she went home in a wheelchair, just before Halloween.<\/p>\n “I went trick-or-treating with my kids, in my wheelchair,” she says with a smile. “That was important.”<\/p>\n She has been trying to adapt to post-wreck life. A ramp outside the home helps access. The interior, though, is not wheelchair-accessible, so the unsteady Lenning often bangs along the walls.<\/p>\n Lenning can walk a bit, but not far. She is unsure how much mobility will return in time. If one of the kids knocks her over while playing, she struggles to get back up.<\/p>\n She keeps a stash of prescription bottles – pain-killers and antidepressants – in a Spider-Man lunch box. The pills can stupefy her.<\/p>\n “I try not to take them,” she says. “I go through the hurt, because I have three kids.”<\/p>\n She especially worries about Keane. From the wreck, he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. He doesn’t want anyone to touch him, and he has become prone to lashing out.<\/p>\n “He has nightmares all the time,” Lenning says.<\/p>\n For months, her partner, Hammer, stayed home to care for the kids. However, he recently returned to work, as money has become very tight.<\/p>\n Indeed, the couple has fallen behind in most every payment: house, car, you name it. Meanwhile, two big boxes have filled with piles of medial bills. One 28-page hospital bill alone is $228,910. All told, Lenning says, she owes more than $600,000.<\/p>\n Unmarried, she had no health coverage through Hammer. She now has a state medical card, but she has problems about who will pick up what costs.<\/p>\n In that she was hurt in a car wreck, her auto insurance provides $100,000 in medical coverage. But that money is tied up, as her medical providers and the state have put in claims.<\/p>\n The driver of the car has nowhere near the coverage needed to pay for all of her medical claims. The couple isn’t sure what to do.<\/p>\n That’s why friends and family are hosting a spaghetti dinner benefit, starting at 4 p.m. March 20 at Carrigan’s Pub, 5506 N Main St. East Peoria. The event, which asks for a $6 donation at the door, also includes raffles and a silent auction.<\/p>\n By then, they might know the fate of one other person involved on the devastating night: the driver who sped away.<\/p>\n A half-hour after the wreck, police arrested Michael Rennie, 55, of 2262 Knollaire Drive, Washington, at Rome Road and Old Galena Road. He has since been indicted on two counts of leaving the scene of a personal injury accident, two counts of aggravated DUI and one count of driving on a revoked license.<\/p>\n Rennie faces up to seven years in prison. He did not return a call for comment.<\/p>\n Lenning says quietly, “I just want him to pay for what he did to us.”<\/p>\n What would be the appropriate punishment? Lenning pauses to think, then adds in an even softer voice, “I don’t want to say anything mean.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n PHIL LUCIANO is a columnist with the Journal Star. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, 686-3155 or (800) 225-5757, Ext. 3155. Luciano co-hosts “The Markley & Luciano Show,” 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. weekdays on 102.3 Max-FM.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n With a playful noogie, Tracie Lenning saved her son’s life. Every night, she and 6-year-old Keane would take their beloved pooch, Gremlin, for a walk. Of the trio, Keane was closest to the road on the evening of July 24. Better safe than sorry, Lenning switched places with the boy, maneuvering him farthest from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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