McLaren Driver Charged After Deadly Chicago Crash Leaves Woman Dead and SUV Driver Missing

A deadly overnight crash involving a McLaren has turned into a criminal case in Chicago — and the details are brutal. Speed, bad decisions, and reckless driving all collided in the middle of a city intersection, and a woman is dead.

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Chicago police say 38-year-old Garland Spikes has been charged after a violent crash in the Grand Crossing neighborhood killed a 56-year-old woman early Sunday morning. Investigators allege Spikes was driving a McLaren that blew a red light and slammed into a black SUV around 1:45 a.m. near the 7400-block of South Stony Island Avenue.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the woman as Detrice D. Wortham. Police say she was in the black SUV heading northbound when the McLaren, traveling eastbound, ran the light and plowed into her. Wortham died at the scene.

It gets worse. Police say the McLaren driver was behind the wheel of a six-figure exotic while his license was suspended. Spikes now faces reckless homicide, reckless driving, and driving with a suspended license, and was due in court Tuesday.

And the SUV driver? They reportedly fled. That matters, because the wreck didn’t stop at the first impact. Video from the scene showed the heavily damaged black Nissan SUV crashed into a box truck afterward — the force apparently sending it careening into more vehicles, turning one alleged red-light run into a fatal chain reaction.

A McLaren is built for the edge: brutal acceleration and speeds that blow past anything a public street is designed to handle. Drop that into a city packed with intersections, traffic signals, and box trucks, and when something goes wrong it goes wrong fast. Police haven’t released details on speed or impairment, and no charges beyond those filed have been announced — but the accusations alone hit a nerve a lot of drivers feel: dangerous behavior paired with someone who legally shouldn’t have been driving at all.

A suspended license isn’t a paperwork technicality. It reshapes how people read the crash, raising accountability questions that predate the impact. If the allegations hold up, prosecutors will lean hard on the claim that Spikes was already barred from driving before anyone died.

Here’s the part that stings for enthusiasts. Every time a high-profile exotic crash turns deadly, the pressure ramps up against performance cars and the whole culture — calls for stricter enforcement, harsher penalties, more surveillance, broader scrutiny of drivers who had nothing to do with it. Real enthusiasts know that owning or loving a fast car comes with responsibility, and a case like this hands critics ammunition against all of them.

It also spotlights a problem cities keep wrestling with: intersections are some of the deadliest spots on urban roads. A red-light violation is especially serious because it kills the one predictable system everyone relies on. The moment one driver ignores it, everybody else in the box is instantly exposed.

For Wortham’s family, the legal grind starts while they grieve a loss police say never should have happened. For prosecutors, the case turns on whether reckless choices directly caused the death. For Chicago drivers, it’s one more reminder of how fast an ordinary drive can turn deadly.

Then there’s the lingering question of the SUV driver who reportedly ran. Police haven’t said why they left or whether more charges could follow — another layer on a crash that already involves serious criminal allegations, a fatality, and one of the most recognizable supercar brands on earth.

Performance cars aren’t the problem. Reckless behavior is. But when someone allegedly runs a red light in a McLaren on a suspended license, the damage spreads past one Chicago intersection — it dents public trust, feeds political pressure, and gives critics another example to swing at driving culture. And for the people who just want to enjoy cars responsibly, that may be the costliest fallout of all.

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About the Author

Shawn Henry

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Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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