Illinois Man Dies in Crash; Wife Leaves Car, Vanishes

(CNN) -- An Illinois woman walked away from a car crash that killed her husband, authorities believe, but they have found no trace of her other than footprints in the snow leading to a road.

A search was in its third day Tuesday for Tanya Shannon, 40, of Ransom, Illinois, according to the LaSalle County, Illinois, Sheriff's Office.

Ground operations began at 9 a.m. with air operations starting at noon, Sheriff Tom Templeton said. "They're looking," he told CNN sister network HLN. "They're expanding their search area just a little."

Shannon was last seen along with her husband Dale Shannon, 41, at a Christmas party Saturday night in Streator, about 17 miles west of Ransom, relatives told CNN affiliate WGN and the Chicago Tribune.

"They were dancing together, really cutting up a rug," Dale Shannon's sister Donna Baker, who was at the party, told the Tribune. She said the couple -- married 20 years with four daughters ages 4 to 15 -- left the party arm in arm.

Her brother was sober, she told the newspaper, and was driving his wife's car.

About 1:45 a.m. Sunday, a deputy on patrol in a rural area of Brookfield Township found a one-car traffic accident, the sheriff's office said in a statement. "The deputy found a male occupant of the vehicle in the driver's seat deceased," the statement said. "Evidence at the scene indicated that a second person was also in the vehicle at the time of the accident. Further investigation revealed that the second person was possibly the wife of the deceased driver."

The car slid backwards into a pole, Templeton said, with enough force to break the backs of both the front seats. A relative told the Tribune Dale Shannon's back was broken.

Footprints were reportedly found leading from the car to a nearby road. But there, Tanya Shannon's trail ends.

"There's nothing for us to believe there's any issues other than exactly what happened, a traffic accident that claimed her husband's life, that she was at least able for a period of time to walk away from and move up to the roadway," the sheriff said. "And once she was on the roadway, that's where we lost track of her."

He said he couldn't speculate on whether or how badly Tanya Shannon was injured in the crash. "She was at least able to get up to the road," he said. Police have her cell phone, he said.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that Tanya Shannon was picked up by someone. But "if she was able to walk and able to move, how come she hasn't contacted any of her family?" Templeton told WGN.

Tanya Shannon was last seen wearing a red dress -- described by the Tribune as a ball gown -- and a gray fleece hooded jacket, police said. The dress should have made her easy to spot in the rural, snowy landscape.

"We were told from the family she was an extremely loving mother," Templeton told the Tribune. For her to just leave with no warning "would be incredibly out of character," Templeton said.

"To be out in the elements as they were that night, dressed only as she was, it's very doubtful that you can survive terribly long."

The crash site was remote, Templeton told the newspaper. A nuclear power plant lies to the north, but the area is surrounded by farmland.

"It's crazy," Baker told WGN. "We're holding on to every ounce of hope we have, just to hope for (a) safe return. ... It's been like a nightmare you can't wake up from. If anybody has anything, seen anything, please, please contact us, because these four girls need something."

Search and rescue operations have so far involved dogs and aircraft from the Illinois State Police, along with more than 50 searchers, according to WGN and the sheriff's office.

Tanya Shannon is described as being 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds, with shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair and green eyes, according to the sheriff's statement. She also wears glasses.

It's very mysterious what might have happened to Tanya," Baker told the Tribune. "We checked the area hospitals and nothing, so we don't know if someone picked her up and took her somewhere. We just don't know."

Templeton said he's never seen a case like this in his 12 years as sheriff. "Anything that's even remotely close has been gone over several times," he told the newspaper.

Anyone with information regarding Tanya Shannon's whereabouts is asked to contact the LaSalle County Sheriff's Office.

Ransom is about 70 miles northeast of Peoria, Illinois.

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Update: Tanya Shannon's Husband Was Drunk In Crash That Led To Her Disappearance
Huffington Post- As police and volunteers in rural Illinois wait out a bout of winter weather in the search for Tanya Shannon, new information has been released about the crash that led to her disappearance.

Two weeks ago, Tanya and her husband Dale attended a Saturday night holiday party in Streator, Ill., dancing and enjoying themselves. They left arm-in-arm, and Dale got behind the wheel to drive them home to nearby Ransom, about 15 miles away.

At 1:45 a.m. that night, a deputy found their car slammed against a utility pole on the Grand Ridge Mazon Blacktop. Dale's neck broke almost immediately, killing him. But Tanya disappeared virtually without a trace, leaving behind only a single slipper and a few footsteps leading into the snowy plain.

Now, the LaSalle County Coroner's Office is suggesting a possible cause for the crash: Dale Shannon had a blood-alcohol content of .266, more than three times the legal limit of .08, according to an Associated Press report.

Meanwhile, forecasts continue to predict high temperatures well below freezing in the area, with the weather possibly warming up late next week. The search for Tanya will wait for warmer weather, as authorities hope that a snowmelt will reveal some more of the snow-covered field surrounding the crash site.

Officials speculate that she may have fallen into a ditch, and her body may be covered by the snow, but they are not ruling out the possibility that she is alive.

Darien Driver Killed in Bizarre Crash

I somehow missed posting this article, although I should've when it had happened.
Joe's last house was in Darien, one street away from this horrible fatal accident which happened July 11th, 2010:

Darien, Conn. (WTNH) - A Darien woman died in an early morning crash on Hollow Tree Road today. Police say speed definitely played a part in the accident.

The residential road in the Noroton Heights section of town was closed for 11 hours while investigators processed the scene.

Anita Rycenga lives in the neighborhood. “It sounded like a huge explosion, like when a transformer, one of those big electrical boxes goes. I bolted out of bed.”

The damage created from this one-vehicle accident is immense.

Around 1:30 am, police say a BMW came through Hollow Tree Ridge Road at an extremely high rate of speed. The female driver apparently lost control along a curve. The car went airborne, flew through the unoccupied bedroom of one house, hit a tree and went into the kitchen of the second house.

“There's a significant debris field spanning two separate residences, the roadways, two houses involved,” stated Darien Police Sergeant Jeremiah Marron. "I've never seen an accident that included the dynamics that took place here."

For such a large and uncommon scene, the outcome could have been much worse. Everyone in the second house was asleep on the second floor and away from the damage. The first house was unoccupied at the time of the accident.

Brooke Barrington said her parents just left for vacation on Saturday and if they hadn't, things might have been very tragic.

“If my mom was in town she would be dead. Her head is at that side of the house, that's her bed.”

No injuries were reported in the homes, and police say they are in the early stages of a long investigation.

Investigators say the homes sustained serious structural damage, and that at least one was in danger of collapsing as they tried to remove the car.

30-year-old Whitney Smith, a Darien resident, suffered severe injuries and died a short time later at Stamford Hospital.

This investigation remains ongoing.

If you witnessed or have information about this accident, please contact the Darien Police Department at 203-662-5300.

Whitney Smith’s family and friends, this week, remembered her as a loving, giving woman who had a great life all set up. Smith died early Sunday when her car collided with two Darien houses.

Chris Smith, Whitney’s father, said the family was devastated by the loss of his daughter, who was to marry Douglas Stella of Milford in September. She was a registered retirement associate at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Purchase, N.Y.

Flight 447 Crash Could Join List of Mysteries

(CNN) -- As the possibility decreases that investigators will learn what happened to Air France Flight 447 on Monday over the Atlantic Ocean, the chances of it entering the folklore of mystery crashes grows.

Brazilian air force officials still have not identified debris from the Airbus A330, and a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board official said currents would be scattering any debris from the flight over an increasing area, reducing the probability of finding the jetliner's voice and flight data recorders.

Experts said lack of answers about what happened to Flight 447 could give it a lasting place in the public consciousness, like TWA Flight 800.

Flight 800, headed to Paris, France, from New York, crashed into the Atlantic off Long Island in 1996, killing all 230 people aboard. Initially speculating that the plane was the target of a terrorist attack, the NTSB in 2000 released a report citing a short circuit around the center wing fuel tank as the probable cause.

The exact cause still has not been determined, and several other explanations have been offered over the years.

Clint V. Oster Jr., a professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, said that while the public may more readily process a single explanation, the reality is that many crashes are the result of compound difficulties.

"Many crashes don't have a single cause, but rather are the result of a complex sequence of events involving multiple failures. Understanding how these multiple factors interacted to cause the crash can be difficult," said Oster, co-author of "Why Airplanes Crash: Aviation Safety in a Changing World."

Pilot and author Phaedra Hise of Richmond, Virginia, said a love of mysteries multiplied by the fact that air travel still captivates the public keeps fascination high.

"If [John F. Kennedy Jr.] had died in a car crash, there would not be the same level of fascination. Aviation for a lot of people is still pretty magical," said Hise, author of "Anatomy of a Plane Crash."

"If you don't know how [a plane] works, it's pretty magical; this huge thing takes flight. It's just a big mystery. There's a lot of romance with that, a lot of drama," Hise said. "The people who fly them are considered brave and have a lot of heart. And people just don't understand, so many people just don't understand, how airplanes work."

A number of unsolved plane crashes have remained in the public psyche for years:

One of the most famous was that of aviator Amelia Earhart, whose twin-engine Lockheed Electra vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while on a round-the-world flight. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were never heard from again.

Because of the social intrigue, theories -- and conspiracies -- related to Earhart's disappearance have become legend.

None of course ranks as high in mystery as the Bermuda Triangle, a cone-shaped vicinity extending northward from Puerto Rico to about halfway up the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Its origins come from the loss of Flight 19, a team of five Navy bombers that vanished in 1945 after getting disoriented and confused about its coordinates.

More recently, South African Airways Flight 295, a Boeing 747 en route to Johannesburg from Taiwan in 1987, crashed into the Indian Ocean shortly after the pilot reported smoke in the cabin. While debris that washed up on the shores of Madagascar was tested, the cause of the crash has never been positively established.

In 1994, U.S. Air Flight 427 crashed in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, after taking off in Chicago, Illinois, en route to West Palm Beach, Florida. While federal officials identified a problem with the rudder but could not explain why the plane suddenly flipped and crashed, not a single clue has revealed why the mechanism failed. All 132 people aboard died.

Golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet crashed in 1999. Although federal investigators revealed that the cabin air system lost pressure, it still has not been determined why. The pilots reportedly lost contact with air traffic controllers about 15 minutes into the flight. The investigation uncovered that the jet flew a straight course until it ran out of fuel and crashed in South Dakota.

In January 2008, a British Airways Boeing 777 crashed short of the runway at Heathrow Airport in London, England. Nineteen of the 152 people aboard were injured. There still is no explanation for why the plane's engines lost power.

"The one that fascinates me is Steve Fossett," said Hise."I have absolutely no idea what happened to that man."

Fossett, an adventurer famous for being the first person to complete a solo balloon flight around the world, was reported missing over Nevada in September 2007. Months after investigators searched for his body, his widow, in February 2008, requested that he be declared legally dead. His bones, found more than a half-mile from where his plane wreckage was discovered, were positively identified later that year.

"He was flying in clear skies, in an area he was familiar with. That's the one that kind of eats away at me," Hise said.

With all the mystery, David M. Primo, associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester, said there's a broader effect when investigations fail to find clues about how an aircraft go down.

"An unsolved crash has the effect of creating an erroneous perception that flying is unsafe, even though it is a remarkably safe form of travel," said Primo, co-author of "The Plane Truth: Airline Crashes, The Media and Transportation Policy."

The odds of dying in a domestic plane crash are one in 70 million, according to MIT statistician Arnold Barnett, who has performed analyses for the Federal Aviation Administration.