Vehicle crashes through LaGrange square for third time since June (UPDATED)

This story has been updated to correct the model of car involved. For the third time since the monument there was destroyed by a truck crash in June, someone drove through the center of LaGrange early Monday morning. A 2000 Chevrolet Monte Carlo went through the circle at 12:43 a.m., crashed and caught fire, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The driver was injured and taken to University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center, according to the highway patrol. That person was not identified. Roads leading to the square, which is the intersection of state routes 301 and 303 through the center of LaGrange, were closed while troopers and emergency personnel worked the scene. The crash remains under investigation, the highway patrol said. The crash report was not immediately available. LaGrange Township Trustee Rita Canfield said it was the third crash through the square. The first was a June 28 crash that destroyed the 119-year-old war memorial there. The date of the second wasn't known. "I don't know what's going on," Canfield said Monday. "I don't know what's wrong with people." Canfield said she reached out to Ohio Department of Transportation officials in Oberlin and Ashland and asked them to meet with her and her fellow township trustees "to talk about what we can do" to prevent these incidents. "It's crazy," she said. "So far we've gotten lucky no one's been killed. I don't know what's causing these accidents." The lights that illuminated the memorial were destroyed in the first crash and Canfield said she doesn't know if that means people can't see what's ahead of them. She said she was gathering crash reports from the highway patrol and was going to talk to ODOT about putting up concrete barriers to stop cars. "We're just hoping we can stop people from going through. It's a safety issue," she said. LaGrange Township owns the property in the village square where the 119-year-old monument stood. The community built it as a memorial to those who died in the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War. The 2018 International semi-truck that drove through the center of LaGrange at about 3 a.m. June 28 destroyed the war memorial that had stood there since 1903. The driver was not injured but appeared to have fallen asleep. Herbert Boyd, 37, of Hamilton, pleaded guilty to failure to stop, a minor misdemeanor, in Elyria Municipal Court last month and was ordered to pay $252 in fines and court costs, according to court records. After the trucking company's insurance representatives saw video of the crash, Canfield said they told her they expected to pay. The township still is working with the trucking firm's insurance company and the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office The estimated cost just to carve a new statue and monument from American granite is $500,000, and the work could take up to two years, Canfield said in August. That doesn't take into account the base of the monument, installation costs, a new flagpole and electrical service, she said at the time. When all the costs are added up, Canfield said Monday, fixing a damaged sprinkler system, landscaping, and concrete in the square and replacing the lights that lit the monument at night could put the cost up over $1 million or up to as much as $1.5 million. Civil War reenactors with the 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and LaGrange Township trustees laid a memorial wreath at the site in July. It was know as "Sherman's Monument," though the statue was not of Lancaster native and American Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. His name and that of three other Civil War leaders from Ohio were carved into the stone base. The statue was erected facing south toward the southern states that seceded from the union in the 1860s. More than 310,000 Ohioans served in the Civil War from 1861-1865, and more than 15,000 served in the Spanish-American War in 1898, according to the Ohio History Connection. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.