Woman who was pinned by SUV at Indiana toll booth dies four days later

A Michigan woman died Wednesday after being rescued from her own vehicle crushing her last week at a tollbooth in northwest Indiana.

Luciana Ortiz, 40, was pinned between her sports-utility vehicle and a tollgate on Saturday, Dec. 8 at the West Point Toll Plaza on the Indiana Toll Road, according to Indiana State Police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Four days later, Ortiz was pronounced dead at 2:24 p.m.

Ortiz had pulled in front of the tollgate east of the Illinois-Indiana border about 9:20 p.m. that day, police said. She dropped her debit card while trying to pay and opened her door to pick it up.

But during the retrieval, her car lurched forward as she stuck a leg outside, police said. It continued inching ahead, wedging her further against a tollgate until she lost consciousness.

An Indiana state trooper eventually got to the SUV and put it in park before performing life-saving measures on her, police said. She was then airlifted to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

Ortiz was from Otsego in western Michigan, according to the medical examiner’s office.

An autopsy to determine her cause of death scheduled for Saturday showed she died of complications of mechanical asphyxiation from being pinned, according to the medical examiner’s office.