DANVILLE -- A 12-year-old boy who died while driving a stolen minivan was a foster child who escaped from a hospital emergency room after running away from the home where he'd been assigned, officials said. Travis Messenger died Monday after crashing a stolen minivan on a country road near Westville, Capt. Rod Kaag of the Vermilion County Sheriff's Department told The News Gazette newspaper in Champaign. Westville is just south of Danville, the town near the Indiana state line where the boy was from.
A 14-year-old friend, Logan Cudney, was with Travis in the van and remains hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said.
State officials aren't sure where Travis was headed but said children who run away from foster care are often trying to get back to parents or siblings.
"More often than not, children in foster care, when they run away, are running away to something, not away from something," Kendall Marlowe, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, told The Associated Press. "They are nearly always running back to family in some form."
Travis had only recently been returned to the care of state officials after running away from the Urbana foster home he was assigned to earlier in the month, Marlowe said.
The boy was at a hospital in Hoopeston, about 30 miles north of Danville, for a routine check after being returned to state care when he fled the emergency room, Marlowe said. Marlowe said Travis one DCFS employee was with him at the hospital but declined to discuss how Travis got away or how closely he was being watched.
A court gave custody of Travis and three siblings to the state on July 6 after a series of reports alleging abuse or neglect by his parents, Marlowe said.
At a Wednesday night gathering at a Danville park for Travis' family and friends, an older sister said Travis and twin brother Trevor didn't want to be in foster care.
"He was just scared," 16-year-old Kaylee Messenger said. "He just didn't know what to do. I spoke with them every night and told them to just take it easy and it would all work out."
Travis apparently first stole a pickup truck and wrecked that before taking the van, authorities said.
