Driver taunted friends before crash: 'Get ready to die'

By Natalie Martinez, NBCChicago.com

 

CHICAGO -- The sole survivor of a fiery, head-on collision says his friend taunted his passengers and seemingly had a death wish in the moments before the crash.

"Get ready to die," Eduardo Rodriguez recalled his friend, Gustvo Vargas, saying in the car as he sped down Interstate 80 and made a U-turn into oncoming traffic.

"We told him to stop. He didn't want to listen and kept going. He didn't want to stop," the 31-year-old Rodriguez said Tuesday as he was released from the hospital with arm and leg injuries.

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Rodriguez said he and his friends had been drinking while watching the Super Bowl at a bar and then later at a strip club, including the driver, Vargas, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Vargas and the others in his car, Jorge Pina and Armando Ruiz, were killed, as was Jason Wepsiec, the young father in the other car who was on his way to visit his fiancée.

A state trooper was able to pull Rodriguez from the mangled car before it burst into flames. Rodriguez said he was unaware that his three friends and Wepsiec died in the crash until he got to the hospital.

He said he knows how fortunate he is to be alive.

"I feel lucky," he said.