He was in front of his home about 8:40 p.m. in the 10400 block of South Eggleston Avenue when someone fired shots at him from a silver-colored Chevy Malibu, Chicago police said.

By

Sun-Times Wire

Jun 22, 2021, 12:07am CDT

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The Court’s 9-0 ruling Monday against the NCAA opens the door for athletes to be compensated. 

God bless the law.

Never thought I, a would-be renegade, could ever say that.

But I have. And I mean it.

It took the Supreme Court to finally tell the NCAA that it is a phony, bullying, patronizing, exploitative monolith built on the laughably indefensible concept of ‘‘amateurism.’’

That longtime fraudulence can be framed thusly: Displaying rare talent, working really hard, entertaining millions, lining the pockets of vast numbers of pseudo-helpers, profiteers and leeches is a noble thing for gifted young men and women to do . . . for free.

In a landmark decision Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that college athletes can be compensated for their work far beyond the room, board and educational scholarships that big-time universities offer them.

Yes, there are some parameters to that decision because at least for now the court says the extra benefits should be education-related somehow. But you can almost guarantee that soon that limit will be erased, too.

No matter. The athletes are, at last, basically free to make a buck.

Will college fans who are happy with the status quo like that?

Probably not.

Will the decision create havoc and complications in many quarters?

Absolutely.

Does it mean the loss of a certain kind of collegiate innocence, no matter how contrived?

Yes, it does.

But guess what?

You can only prop up a tilting Rube Goldberg contraption for so long, no matter how much you love the propeller that spins at the end.

Indeed, it was the NCAA itself that professionalized everything about big-time, entertainment-driven, revenue-producing sport in the first place. Everything, that is, except for the workers, who went unpaid.

Nobody ever said the NCAA had to put its games on TV, charge a fortune for tickets, build massive stadiums and sports complexes, pay coaches many millions of dollars. That was done because the NCAA wanted to. Boosters and fans and gamblers liked it, too.

But nobody ever asked the athletes what they thought. They were young, disorganized, gone soon.

Expand from 10 football games a year to as many as 15 or 16 now? Done.

Miss many classes in a major that is irrelevant and useless so you can prep for the Big Dance (rather than the major you’d want if this really were about education)? Done.

Wear a shoe on command and watch the endorsement wealth go to, say, Urban Meyer or John Calipari or some coach who wears wing tips? Done.

The compounding hypocrisy was so overwhelming that by its sheer audacity it tended to blind us to reality. It has been said before that folks will believe a big lie sooner than a little one. I mean, if anyone can name any profession in this country wherein the skilled laborers get nothing for compensation but meals, beds and books, I’d like to hear of it.

The court said essentially that athletes can profit off their likeness and test the waters on many other ventures. After all, whom would fans prefer to see at a meet-and-greet — a gum-cracking, fast-talking college coach or the star quarterback or point guard? Or even the entire usually anonymous — but stunningly huge — offensive line?

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s opinion, ripping the NCAA’s contempt for antitrust law by limiting benefits to athletes to only the stuff it wants to give out. He was measured and precise in explaining the change, leaving a lot out there for review.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh was less restrained, caustically explaining how wrong the NCAA’s ‘‘amateurism’’ philosophy is and opening the door for even more athlete freedom in the future.

‘‘All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ wages on the theory that ‘customers prefer’ to eat food from low-paid cooks,’’ Kavanaugh wrote. ‘‘Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick.’’

He concluded, ‘‘Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor.’’

For more than a century, the NCAA has worked for its own good. In its eyes, somehow, 19- to 23-year-old athletes are too young, too naive, too easily manipulated, too stupid to share in the revenue they produce. Gotta hand it to the NCAA. It was a great con while it lasted.

It’s always a shame when Congress or the courts have to make institutions do what they should’ve done all along. It’s also bad when those decisions become politicized.

But this mixed-bag Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) against the NCAA’s exploitation.

On the field of play, that’s what’s called a butt-whippin’.

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A man and a woman were sitting in a vehicle about 9:40 p.m. in the 11800 block of South Michigan Avenue when someone fired shots, striking them both multiple times, Chicago police said.

A man was killed and a woman critically wounded in a shooting Monday on the Far South Side.

They were sitting in a vehicle about 9:40 p.m. in the 11800 block of South Michigan Avenue when someone fired shots, striking them both multiple times, Chicago police said.

The man, 32, was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead, police said. The 35-year-old woman was taken to the same hospital in critical condition.

Police said the pair were unable to provide details on the incident because of the severity of their injuries.

No arrests have been made. Area Two detectives are investigating.

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The 19-year-old was sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle about 9:42 p.m. in the 300 block of West 52nd Place when someone stepped out of a gray Infiniti G35 and opened fire, Chicago police said.

A woman died in a shooting Monday in Fuller Park on the South Side.

The 19-year-old was sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle about 9:42 p.m. in the 300 block of West 52nd Place when someone stepped out of a gray Infiniti G35 and opened fire, Chicago police said.

The woman was struck twice to the side of her body and once to her lower back, police said. She was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

No arrests have been reported. Area One detectives are investigating.

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Baez forgot the number of outs in the fourth inning leading to an inning-ending double play in the Cubs’ 4-0 loss.

Manager David Ross wants his players to have fun and enjoy themselves on the field everyday, but one of his requirements is playing with effort and focus. In the Cubs’ 4-0 loss to the Indians on Monday, shortstop Javy Baez lost some of that focus, leading to an early exit from the game.

Baez was on first base in the fourth inning with one out when first baseman Anthony Rizzo flied out to left. Baez, not realizing how many outs there were, never stopped running after the and once he realized, never made an attempt to get back to first base.

“We just got to make sure we’re focused and locked in during the game,” Ross said after the loss. “Sometimes our frustrations can distract us a little bit. We had a good conversation, I think that’s behind us. Javy’s really important to this team and he’s a leader on this team and sets a good example every time he’s on the field.”

The mental lapse led to an inning-ending double play and led Ross to bench his superstar shortstop the next inning. During Rizzo’s at-bat, Baez was also glued to the bag and didn’t take a lead off until the pitch was thrown.

“He’s one of the guys that I rely on to set a good example for all these guys,” Ross said. “But I think highly of him and his skill set. So, yeah, I think it’s just a little bit of lack of concentration.”

“I was just surprised,” Baez said. “Obviously, I never want to be out of the lineup. You just respect his decision.”

When the Cubs returned to the field in the fifth inning, Sergio Alcantara replaced Baez at shortstop. Since Ross took over as manager last year, Baez has had some mental lapses. Many times Ross would talk to him in the dugout and allow him to remain in the game, avoiding making an example of his player in public.

But this time, Ross decided to send a message to his star shortstop and pull him from the game. Last season, Ross made a similar move with outfielder Kyle Schwarber after a lapse on defense. While it’s a decision he felt he had to make, it’s still not something, the second-year manager wants to do.

“It did not feel good to take Javy out of the game,” Ross said. “I never feel comfortable doing that at all. That’s a that’s a big pit stomach and was in my stomach the entire game.”

There are few players you’re going to find on a baseball field that play harder than Baez, who on a nightly basis, does extra to make things happen for the Cubs. But Baez sets an example for the group and had to pay the price for the mental error.

Despite the disappointment of being removed from the game, Baez understood why the move needed to be made and

“I blame myself. I lost count of the outs,” Baez said. “We talked about it and we’re on the same page. I’ll be there tomorrow to help the team.”

“There are no hard feelings right now,” he said. “Things happens between brothers, teammates, and managers. It happens and we always try to be on the same page and try to help the team as much as we can.”

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Skeleton Key in Woodridge needs help after the brewery was smashed by Sunday’s tornadoes.Read More

After the tornado passed, Jean-Philippe Ducreux emerged from his Naperville home to find his neighbor’s home had collapsed and its owner was sifting through the rubble to find his wife — amid the smell and hiss of a gas leak.

“The husband was injured but good enough and said ‘my wife should be around here,'” said Ducreux, 51, who moved to the United States from France three years ago for work.

The men followed the sound of her screams.

“We unburied her,” said Ducreux, who worried about a gas explosion as the pair, aided by a firefighter who arrived on the scene, worked to free her. “I think she was pretty lucky because there was two sides and a top around her, two walls and a door; she was pretty protected, but she was hurt.”

The woman, Savita Patel, was taken to Edward Hospital, and she was in fair condition Monday evening. She was one of at least eight people who received treatment there, according to the City of Naperville Facebook page.

The Patels’ home, near 75th Street and Ranchview Drive, lay in the path of a EF-3 tornado that packed winds reaching 140 mph.

The twister touched down in Naperville about 11:02 p.m. in the area of the Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve and headed east nearly parallel to 75th Street and into the communities of Woodridge, Darien and Burr Ridge before petering out in Willow Springs, according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Brett Borchardt.

It was on the ground for about 20 minutes, moved at a speed of about 45 to 50 mph and traveled about 10 miles, smashing cars, ripping roofs off homes, downing power lines, shearing off garage doors, uprooting large trees and spewing debris as high 19,000 feet, or 3.59 miles into the sky, Borchardt said.

In Naperville, at least 125 homes were damaged, 16 of them considered uninhabitable. In Woodridge, three adults were taken to hospitals, according to Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Deputy Fire Chief Steve Demas.

On Monday, the goodwill of neighbors who showed up in droves to help clean up the mess was on full display.

A platoon of community members, including dozens of high school athletes, descended on the site of the Patels’ home — the hardest hit in the area — to do whatever they could to help.

“I came over this morning after practice,” said Ayden Lutes, 17, a member of the Naperville Central High School wrestling team. “I felt terrible. It sucks when your fellow community members are in need. And then I saw the football guys come out so I texted a couple of wrestling guys to come out … we’ve decided to replace our weightlifting sessions with debris-moving sessions instead.”

Some volunteers removed heavy debris. Others sifted through the mess to recover family pictures and other precious items.

Anna Lindflott, 21, fished dozens of colorful bracelets from a neighbor’s above-ground pool that was reduced to a murky puddle when parts of the Patel home flew onto it.

“Anything we can do to help,” said Lindflott, who lives nearby.

The pool belongs to Katie Long Piper, who survived the tornado in her basement with her son and her 85-year-old mother as their home shifted on its foundation but remained standing.

“It didn’t sound like a freight train; it sounded like explosions,” said Long Piper, who runs Naperville Central High School’s in-school television network and coordinates school activities, like dances.

A piece of wood crashed through her basement window well as Long Piper laid on her belly with her mom and son.

“I’m so grateful I got everyone in the basement and that our house didn’t get sucked up,” she said while expressing love and concern for her less fortunate neighbors.

“They’re awesome, great people,” she said.

Photos on social media catalogued the damage across the affected suburbs.

As chainsaws growled and bulldozers crunched over splintered tree limbs, Kris Florczak eyed the meager pile of possessions she’d managed to save — a stack of family photographs, her wedding ring, a ceramic figurine of the Virgin Mary.

“Oh my God, it survived!” the 70-year-old widow cried out as her sister handed her a hand-made wooden creche.

Florczak’s surprise wasn’t unwarranted, given that daylight poured into her kitchen from where a roof had once been. Chunks of brick wall littered her garden and all that remained of her side windows was a twisted wooden frame with bits of glass jutting from it like shark teeth.

“Right now, I’m just glad I’m alive, the dogs are OK and family is here,” said Florczak, who somehow managed to survive a direct hit when a tornado ripped through Woodridge late Sunday night.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The tornado began its path of destruction near Naperville, where it packed wind speeds near 140 mph, and moved into Woodridge near Route 53 and 75th Street about 11:10 p.m., the National Weather Service said. It then moved west to east into Darien, Burr Ridge and Willow Springs.

Survey teams found damage caused by the twister was consistent with an EF-3 tornado, the weather service said, citing preliminary information. Teams will continue to survey the damage in the coming days.

The twister, measuring about three blocks wide, traveled some 3 miles from west to east across the village, village officials said during a news briefing Monday. Mayor Gina Cunningham said she’s lived in the village since 1967 and was unaware of another tornado touching down in that time.

“During that path, there was a lot of destruction, mostly of homes and some multifamily dwellings,” said Woodridge Police Chief Brian Cunningham.

A total of 100 structures were damaged “significantly,” village officials said.

About 2,100 customers in Woodridge were still without power as of 9 p.m. Monday, according to a spokesperson for ComEd. Overall, about 61,000 customers were affected by the storm, and 4,600 are still without power.

But the “vast majority” of affected customers were expected to have their power restored by 11 p.m. Monday, the spokesperson said, with some customers in the hardest hit areas to get power back by Tuesday afternoon.

Florczak had known a storm was on the way Sunday night — she just didn’t know how bad.

She received a text from her nephew about 10:45 p.m. He said it was going to be no ordinary storm. Some 15 minutes later, she was in her downstairs bathroom with her rescue dogs, Eeyore and Payson.

“God protect me in here,” she prayed.

She heard glass shattering, metal twisting and rain lashing her home. And even though the twister tore off the roof and caved in her front door, she remained unharmed in her bathroom. By 11:20 p.m., it was all over. Firefighters had to cut a hole in her garage door so that she could escape, she said.

As her sister, Sandra Baar, handed her items from within the shattered remains of her home Monday, Florczak said: “I’m too stunned right now. I needed a new roof. There are things that needed to be done in the kitchen.”

Mark Kasper looked out at the devastation in his backyard and chuckled at the sliver of fence that remained standing — a section he’d propped up temporarily with a two-by-four plank. Inside the home he shares with his wife, Jamie Kasper, soggy pink roof insulation dangled down through a gaping hole in the living room ceiling. The power was still out Monday morning, and Jamie Kasper wandered through her darkened home with a lamp strapped to her head.

“We definitely had a guardian angel looking over us,” Jamie Kasper, 29, said.

The Kaspers don’t have a basement. As the tornado approached, they ran to their bathroom because it doesn’t have any windows.

“Subconsciously, over the years, I’ve always kept that in mind as an emergency hiding spot, but I never thought I’d have to use it,” Mark Kasper said.

He described a “very scary quiet” before the tornado blasted through.

“Within a few moments, we heard the wind pick up,” he said. “We ran for cover in our bathroom. I’m talking moments from when we closed the bathroom door — windows exploded like a bomb went off. The house shook.”

The Kaspers huddled on their knees in the bathroom. He said the worst part was the smell of leaking gas.

“From there, it was a blur. I remember pulling trees off my Jeep to get away from that,” he said.

Mark Kasper, who said he has insurance, was waiting for a chainsaw to arrive Monday morning so that he could begin cutting up the huge branches littering his yard.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

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In the early morning hours Monday, neighbors in suburbs across the Chicago area emerged from their homes after a tornado ripped through the area late Sunday night, damaging more than a hundred homes and injuring several people, including a woman who was in critical condition.

“Unbelievable,” a homeowner said while staring at a home missing its roof and a wall in Woodridge. The “craziest 45 seconds of my life,” said another. “You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” said a woman in Darien. Others said it sounded like a train went by — overhead.

And then, “as fast as it came, it was gone,” as Joseph Palacios, of Woodridge, recalled.

The neighbors came together hours after a tornado touchdown was confirmed about 11:10 p.m. near Route 53 and 75th Street in Woodridge, according to the National Weather Service said. The tornado — packing winds of up to 135 mph — also hit portions of Naperville, Downers Grove, Darien and Burr Ridge, smashing cars, ripping roofs off homes, downing power lines, shearing off garage doors, uprooting large trees and spewing debris thousands of feet into the air.

Naperville reported at least eight people taken to Edward Hospital; one who had been in critical condition was upgraded Monday to fair condition. At least 125 homes were damaged, 16 of them considered uninhabitable. In Woodridge, three adults were taken to hospitals, according to Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Deputy Fire Chief Steve Demas.

“It’s shocking to see the devastation — all the trees are just gone, [as well as] people’s houses,” Palacios said.

Palacios comforted his wife as she wiped tears from her eyes. “It’s hard seeing it in the daylight,” she said.

“It definitely is because it’s home,” her husband added. “Just to see it torn up, it’s obviously never going to look the same ever again.”

Earlier in Woodridge, Nate Casey, 16, strummed his guitar as he sat in a lawn chair with his mother, Bridget Casey, in their driveway around 4 a.m. Monday. The entire second floor of their house was gone, and their garage was destroyed.

The home is in the 7800 block of Woodridge Drive, one of the areas hit hardest by the storm.

Nate said he was watching TV when the storm rolled through. “I just heard a loud crash and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, what are my brothers up to?’ I go look and I see the sky, and then I hear my brothers screaming from the room.”

Nate, a student at Downers Grove South High School, helped his mother get his three younger siblings to the basement. He grabbed some of his camping equipment and scout gear just to be safe before going down himself.

“I just can’t believe it happened, you know? It’s not something that you see too often or at all, and it’s just scary that everything just comes crashing in,” Nate said. “Something that I was happy to see, that was not broken, was my dad’s ashes, but there’s really nothing else.”

Bridget Casey said she plans to live with her sister while their house gets repaired, though she doesn’t know how long that will take.

“I was just happy that everybody was OK,” she said.

A person who lives behind Casey brought her some personal items, including pictures and her children’s birth certificates, that he found in his backyard. “That means the world to me,” she said. “They didn’t have to do that.”

Down the street, Donna Suchecki joined a few of her neighbors in a driveway around 3:30 a.m. They sipped wine and moonshine out of blue plastic cups and talked about the damage.

“It’s overwhelming. All of us are like, ‘Oh my God, this really happened.’ It’s kind of a dream, you see it on TV, you see shows, you see stuff like that on tornados and … then you come out here and you see the cops, you see the fire trucks and stuff and you’re just like, ‘Wow,'” Suchecki said.

Heaps of trees covered Suchecki’s front lawn, but “luckily nothing hit” the house, she said. Her fence was smashed under a tree, though she said it needed to be replaced anyway.

Across the street, two cars sat on a slab of cement where the garage once was. Suchecki said it was uprooted and tossed into the backyard, where it hit a power line, leaving the block without power.

Rich Hein/Sun-Times

“It’s crazy to go through this,” she said. “That’s a traumatic event.”

Debris 10,000 feet in the atmosphere, winds up to 135 mph

The tornado lifted debris 10,000 feet into the atmosphere, “a clearcut sign to us that we have a tornado of some significance,” said weather service meteorologist Matt Friedlein.

Based on the damage, the tornado’s wind speeds were likely between 111 and 135 mph, Friedlein said. Surveyors were inspecting damage Monday to confirm if other potential tornados hit areas including Aurora and Hobart, Indiana.

In Naperville, officials said there were power outages and gas leaks reported.

Crystal Porter was on her way home from her mother’s home in Joliet when she got a tornado warning alert. She said it took her five attempts to find a way to her home in the 2700 block of Everglade Avenue.

Ultimately, the retired military veteran had to move a tree to do so. After checking her dogs, Porter walked around the streets to assess the damage.

Porter, 27, noticed firefighters doing a search and rescue at a partially destroyed home and removing a cage filled with doves. With the owners not home, Porter grabbed a dog crate from her garage and rescued the birds.

“At least they’re not left out in the street,” she said.

Southwest suburbs hit, too

In Darien, Maureen Malloy recalls the lights going off around 11:15 p.m. Sunday as the winds picked up.

“You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” Malloy said. “The wind was so strong that it was coming through the bottom and side of my door and it was blowing my hair back.”

She said that only lasted for about two minutes, but she waited until close to 1 a.m. to assess the damage. The entire street was blocked with trees, and a five-story weeping willow fell inches from her home.

“We are all very fortunate,” Malloy said. “These trees seriously could have killed somebody.”

Nicole Poletti was in the basement of her house in Burr Ridge with her husband and two kids when she heard a loud bang.

“It sounded like an explosion, and it happened in a split second,” she said. It was not until a bit later into the night that her husband was able to walk upstairs and see that noise was a tree falling onto their house.

She left with her kids to stay with her parents for the night, but Monday morning she saw the full extent of the damage.

“We have broken windows, damage to our roof, and actual branches going through our ceiling to our attic. A couple of trees fell onto our house,” she said. Their front yard and driveway were littered with so many broken branches it was hard to see the ground, she said. Her car was also completely destroyed.

Last year, a tornado touched down on Chicago’s North Side and traveled three miles into Lake Michigan. Winds of 110 mph took down trees and cut power to thousands, but no serious injuries were reported.

In 2015, five people were injured in a a tornado that hit Coal City, about 50 miles southwest of Chicago.

In 1990, the strongest tornado ever recorded in the Chicago area tore through Plainfield, killing 29 people and injuring more than 300. The twister cut a 15-mile swath on its way to Crest Hill.

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God bless the law.

Never thought I, a would-be renegade, could ever say that.

But I have. And I mean it.

It took the Supreme Court to finally tell the NCAA that it is a phony, bullying, patronizing, exploitative monolith built on the laughably indefensible concept of ”amateurism.”

That longtime fraudulence can be framed thusly: Displaying rare talent, working really hard, entertaining millions, lining the pockets of vast numbers of pseudo-helpers, profiteers and leeches is a noble thing for gifted young men and women to do . . . for free.

In a landmark decision Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that college athletes can be compensated for their work far beyond the room, board and educational scholarships that big-time universities offer them.

Yes, there are some parameters to that decision because at least for now the court says the extra benefits should be education-related somehow. But you can almost guarantee that soon that limit will be erased, too.

No matter. The athletes are, at last, basically free to make a buck.

Will college fans who are happy with the status quo like that?

Probably not.

Will the decision create havoc and complications in many quarters?

Absolutely.

Does it mean the loss of a certain kind of collegiate innocence, no matter how contrived?

Yes, it does.

But guess what?

You can only prop up a tilting Rube Goldberg contraption for so long, no matter how much you love the propeller that spins at the end.

Indeed, it was the NCAA itself that professionalized everything about big-time, entertainment-driven, revenue-producing sport in the first place. Everything, that is, except for the workers, who went unpaid.

Nobody ever said the NCAA had to put its games on TV, charge a fortune for tickets, build massive stadiums and sports complexes, pay coaches many millions of dollars. That was done because the NCAA wanted to. Boosters and fans and gamblers liked it, too.

But nobody ever asked the athletes what they thought. They were young, disorganized, gone soon.

Expand from 10 football games a year to as many as 15 or 16 now? Done.

Miss many classes in a major that is irrelevant and useless so you can prep for the Big Dance (rather than the major you’d want if this really were about education)? Done.

Wear a shoe on command and watch the endorsement wealth go to, say, Urban Meyer or John Calipari or some coach who wears wing tips? Done.

The compounding hypocrisy was so overwhelming that by its sheer audacity it tended to blind us to reality. It has been said before that folks will believe a big lie sooner than a little one. I mean, if anyone can name any profession in this country wherein the skilled laborers get nothing for compensation but meals, beds and books, I’d like to hear of it.

The court said essentially that athletes can profit off their likeness and test the waters on many other ventures. After all, whom would fans prefer to see at a meet-and-greet — a gum-cracking, fast-talking college coach or the star quarterback or point guard? Or even the entire usually anonymous — but stunningly huge — offensive line?

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s opinion, ripping the NCAA’s contempt for antitrust law by limiting benefits to athletes to only the stuff it wants to give out. He was measured and precise in explaining the change, leaving a lot out there for review.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh was less restrained, caustically explaining how wrong the NCAA’s ”amateurism” philosophy is and opening the door for even more athlete freedom in the future.

”All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ wages on the theory that ‘customers prefer’ to eat food from low-paid cooks,” Kavanaugh wrote. ”Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick.”

He concluded, ”Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor.”

For more than a century, the NCAA has worked for its own good. In its eyes, somehow, 19- to 23-year-old athletes are too young, too naive, too easily manipulated, too stupid to share in the revenue they produce. Gotta hand it to the NCAA. It was a great con while it lasted.

It’s always a shame when Congress or the courts have to make institutions do what they should’ve done all along. It’s also bad when those decisions become politicized.

But this mixed-bag Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) against the NCAA’s exploitation.

On the field of play, that’s what’s called a butt-whippin’.

Read More

On Monday, the goodwill of neighbors who showed up in droves to help clean up the mess was on full display in hard-hit towns including Naperville and Woodridge.

After the tornado passed, Jean-Phillipe Ducreux emerged from his Naperville home to find his neighbor’s home had collapsed and its owner was sifting through the rubble to find his wife — amid the smell and hiss of a gas leak.

“The husband was injured but good enough and said ‘my wife should be around here,’” said Ducreux, 51, who moved to the United States from France three years ago for work.

The men followed the sound of her screams.

“We unburied her,” said Ducreux, who worried about a gas explosion as the pair, aided by a firefighter who arrived on the scene, worked to free her. “I think she was pretty lucky because there was two sides and a top around her, two walls and a door; she was pretty protected, but she was hurt.”

The woman, Savita Patel, was taken to Edward Hospital in critical condition. She was one of at least five people who received treatment there.

The Patels’ home, near 75th Street and Ranchview Drive, lay in the path of a EF-3 tornado that packed winds reaching 140 mph.

The twister touched down in Naperville about 11:02 p.m. in the area of the Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve and headed east nearly parallel to 75th Street and into the communities of Woodridge, Darien and Burr Ridge before petering out in Willow Springs, according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Brett Borchardt.

It was on the ground for about 20 minutes, moved at a speed of about 45 to 50 mph and traveled about 10 miles, smashing cars, ripping roofs off homes, downing power lines, shearing off garage doors, uprooting large trees and spewing debris as high 19,000 feet, or 3.59 miles into the sky, Borchardt said.

In Naperville, at least 125 homes were damaged, 16 of them considered uninhabitable. In Woodridge, three adults were taken to hospitals, according to Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Deputy Fire Chief Steve Demas.

On Monday, the goodwill of neighbors who showed up in droves to help clean up the mess was on full display.

A platoon of community members, including dozens of high school athletes, descended on the site of the Patels’ home — the hardest hit in the area — to do whatever they could to help.

“I came over this morning after practice,” said Ayden Lutes, 17, a member of the Naperville Central High School wrestling team. “I felt terrible. It sucks when your fellow community members are in need. And then I saw the football guys come out so I texted a couple of wrestling guys to come out … we’ve decided to replace our weightlifting sessions with debris-moving sessions instead.”

A glass encased model of the Taj Mahal sat under the sun on the exposed floor of the Patels’ destroyed home near where the front door would have been.

Some volunteers removed heavy debris. Others sifted through the mess to recover family pictures and other precious items.

Anna Lindflott, 21, fished dozens of colorful bracelets from a neighbor’s above-ground pool that was reduced to a murky puddle when parts of the Patel home flew onto it.

“Anything we can do to help,” said Lindflott, who lives nearby.

The pool belongs to Katie Long Piper, who survived the tornado in her basement with her son and her 85-year-old mother as their home shifted on its foundation but remained standing.

“It didn’t sound like a freight train; it sounded like explosions,” said Long Piper, who runs Naperville Central High School’s in-school television network and coordinates school activities, like dances.

A piece of wood crashed through her basement window well as Long Piper laid on her belly with her mom and son.

“I’m so grateful I got everyone in the basement and that our house didn’t get sucked up,” she said while expressing love and concern for her less fortunate neighbors.

“They’re awesome, great people,” she said.

Photos on social media catalogued the damage across the affected suburbs.

As chainsaws growled and bulldozers crunched over splintered tree limbs, Kris Florczak eyed the meager pile of possessions she’d managed to save — a stack of family photographs, her wedding ring, a ceramic figurine of the Virgin Mary.

“Oh my God, it survived!” the 70-year-old widow cried out as her sister handed her a hand-made wooden creche.

Florczak’s surprise wasn’t unwarranted, given that daylight poured into her kitchen from where a roof had once been. Chunks of brick wall littered her garden and all that remained of her side windows was a twisted wooden frame with bits of glass jutting from it like shark teeth.

“Right now, I’m just glad I’m alive, the dogs are OK and family is here,” said Florczak, who somehow managed to survive a direct hit when a tornado ripped through Woodridge late Sunday night.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The tornado began its path of destruction near Naperville, where it packed wind speeds near 140 mph, and moved into Woodridge near Route 53 and 75th Street about 11:10 p.m., the National Weather Service said. It then moved west to east into Darien, Burr Ridge and Willow Springs.

Survey teams found damage caused by the twister was consistent with an EF-3 tornado, the weather service said, citing preliminary information. Teams will continue to survey the damage in the coming days.

The twister, measuring about three blocks wide, traveled some 3 miles from west to east across the village, village officials said during a news briefing Monday. Mayor Gina Cunningham said she’s lived in the village since 1967 and was unaware of another tornado touching down in that time.

“During that path, there was a lot of destruction, mostly of homes and some multifamily dwellings,” said Woodridge Police Chief Brian Cunningham.

A total of 100 structures were damaged “significantly,” village officials said.

About 2,100 customers in Woodridge were still without power as of 9 p.m. Monday, according to a spokesperson for ComEd. Overall, about 61,000 customers were affected by the storm, and 4,600 are still without power.

But the “vast majority” of affected customers were expected to have their power restored by 11 p.m. Monday, the spokesperson said, with some customers in the hardest hit areas to get power back by Tuesday afternoon.

Florczak had known a storm was on the way Sunday night — she just didn’t know how bad.

She received a text from her nephew about 10:45 p.m. He said it was going to be no ordinary storm. Some 15 minutes later, she was in her downstairs bathroom with her rescue dogs, Eeyore and Payson.

“God protect me in here,” she prayed.

She heard glass shattering, metal twisting and rain lashing her home. And even though the twister tore off the roof and caved in her front door, she remained unharmed in her bathroom. By 11:20 p.m., it was all over. Firefighters had to cut a hole in her garage door so that she could escape, she said.

As her sister, Sandra Baar, handed her items from within the shattered remains of her home Monday, Florczak said: “I’m too stunned right now. I needed a new roof. There are things that needed to be done in the kitchen.”

Mark Kasper looked out at the devastation in his backyard and chuckled at the sliver of fence that remained standing — a section he’d propped up temporarily with a two-by-four plank. Inside the home he shares with his wife, Jamie Kasper, soggy pink roof insulation dangled down through a gaping hole in the living room ceiling. The power was still out Monday morning, and Jamie Kasper wandered through her darkened home with a lamp strapped to her head.

“We definitely had a guardian angel looking over us,” Jamie Kasper, 29, said.

The Kaspers don’t have a basement. As the tornado approached, they ran to their bathroom because it doesn’t have any windows.

“Subconsciously, over the years, I’ve always kept that in mind as an emergency hiding spot, but I never thought I’d have to use it,” Mark Kasper said.

He described a “very scary quiet” before the tornado blasted through.

“Within a few moments, we heard the wind pick up,” he said. “We ran for cover in our bathroom. I’m talking moments from when we closed the bathroom door — windows exploded like a bomb went off. The house shook.”

The Kaspers huddled on their knees in the bathroom. He said the worst part was the smell of leaking gas.

“From there, it was a blur. I remember pulling trees off my Jeep to get away from that,” he said.

Mark Kasper, who said he has insurance, was waiting for a chainsaw to arrive Monday morning so that he could begin cutting up the huge branches littering his yard.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

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