Gurnee pedestrian killed: Javier Contreras-Bulnes charged months after Amber Knowles hit, killed by truck on Delany Road: Police
Charges have now been filed several months after a deadly crash in Gurnee . Investigators say distracted driving played a role in it.
The fatal pedestrian crash happened in April 2025 near Delany Road and Sunset Avenue, police said.
Prosecutors say Javier Contreras-Bulnes left the scene of the crash, before later returning, and was using an electronic device right before it happened.
Amber Knowles, who was a pedestrian, was killed.
ABC7 was at a vigil that was held for a 33-year-old woman last year shortly after her death.
Relatives said the woman who was killed would help anyone in need and was studying to be a counselor, but those dreams ended in a blur of traffic.
Police said the woman was crossing Delany Road, where there's no light or crosswalk, when she was hit by a truck.
The woman was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. She was identified to the Lake County Coroner's Office as 33-year-old Amber Knowles.
"I can't even begin to imagine that this has happened," Knowles' sister Christina Kalter said last year. "It's still not even real to me. I just talked to her."
Relatives say she lived about a mile away from where she was struck.
At the time, police said the driver of the Ford E450 truck did not immediately stop after hitting Knowles but did return to the scene.
"So it's not a hit and run crash, but instead had pulled off the roadway to a nearby business and realized that they had hit something and went back to the scene to speak with investigators about it," Gurnee Police Department Det. Shawn Gaylor said.
Now, nearly a year after the crash, the driver, Contreras-Bulnes, is facing charges.
The Lake County Major Crash Assistance Team assisted Gurnee police in the investigation.
No further information was available.
