The night of May 14 into the early hours of May 15 started like any other on I-65 southbound through northwest Indiana. Then somewhere just past midnight, something went terribly wrong inside a blue Ford Explorer carrying five people, four of them children. By the time Indiana State Police troopers arrived at the scene near mile marker 257 in Hobart, three of those children were already dead and the woman behind the wheel was on her way to the hospital — alive, but facing the kind of legal and moral reckoning that doesn’t go away.
Renee Foster, 31, of Gary, Indiana, is the driver at the center of all of this. According to police, she was traveling southbound on I-65 in the right lane when investigators say she fell asleep at the wheel, lost control of her Ford Explorer, and at a high rate of speed, plowed directly into the back of a white Freightliner Cascadia semi-truck. The truck wasn’t moving. It had been parked on the right shoulder of the highway because it was experiencing mechanical problems. The driver of that semi never saw it coming and couldn’t have done a thing to stop it. He walked away without a scratch. The Explorer, on the other hand, sustained what police described as catastrophic damage. The semi’s trailer was significantly damaged too.
But here’s what makes this whole thing even harder to swallow. All four children inside that Explorer were completely unrestrained. Not a single seatbelt. The child in the front passenger seat — ejected from the vehicle on impact — died. Two more in the backseat also died. Nine-year-old Royce Sims, five-year-old Artavius Sims, and 19-year-old Raniah Simpson were all confirmed dead at or after the scene. A fourth child, seven-year-old Terrion, was in the third row and survived, though with life-threatening injuries serious enough to require an airlift to the University of Chicago Medical Center. As of Friday, Terrion remains in critical condition.
Foster told investigators at Franciscan Health in Crown Point, where she was taken for upper body injuries, that she had fallen asleep before the crash. That’s the story she gave. But Indiana State Police aren’t just taking it at face value. Both Foster and the semi driver submitted to blood draws at the scene, and troopers have since stated that alcohol consumption is believed to be a factor in this crash. That single line changes everything about how this case is being framed — and it changes what the charge sheet could ultimately look like once those lab results land.
Right now, the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office has been handed a recommended charge list that’s already serious enough on its own. Four counts of neglect of a dependent at the Level 5 felony level. Reckless driving. Driving with a suspended vehicle registration — meaning she allegedly had no legal business operating a vehicle at all that night. And four counts of child restraint violations, one for each child who had no seatbelt protecting them in that SUV at midnight. That’s what the state is working with right now, before any OWI charge is even on the table.
What compounds the grief of this whole situation is the layering of decisions — or failures — that put those children in danger before the Explorer ever left its lane. A driver with a suspended registration. No seatbelts on any of the kids. A midnight drive on a dark stretch of interstate. And possibly alcohol in the mix. None of those things happened to those children. They happened around them, and they paid the price with their lives. Foster, meanwhile, was still in the hospital Friday and had not been taken into custody.
The crash site on I-65 near Ridge Road was closed for hours overnight as police reconstruction teams and the Lake County Coroner’s Office worked the scene. Toxicology results are pending. The investigation is still open. And somewhere in northwest Indiana, three families are making arrangements for children who should be waking up this Saturday morning, not being laid to rest.
