Speeding Corvette causes crash that seriously injures 3, Kansas trooper says

A 21-year-old Kansas Corvette driver and two people in a second vehicle were hospitalized with suspected serious injuries after a high-speed crash and car fire Tuesday on I-70 in Topeka, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper said.

The Wakefield, Kansas, man “lost control” of a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette, rear-ended the driver of a 2010 Nissan Altima, hit the inside barrier wall and then the guard rail, the trooper wrote in a crash report. The 53-year-old Virginia woman driving the Altima also hit the barrier wall before coming to a rest on the highway.

A trooper extinguished the fire on the Corvette, which is likely totaled, while a Shawnee County deputy removed the driver, who was unconscious, KHP Lt. Mike Gruber said.

The two drivers and a 54-year-old Virginia man also in the Altima were taken to Stormont Vail Health with suspected serious injuries.

Calls come in about an erratic Corvette

Troopers were first called at 6:27 p.m. about a black Corvette in Leavenworth County. Multiple callers said the driver was driving erratically and passing on the shoulder, Gruber said. The crash happened around 6:40 p.m. in Topeka, which is in Shawnee County.

The driver of the Corvette allegedly passed a trooper, who was on the shoulder and looking for the vehicle, at over 100 mph, Gruber said. The trooper never got within a half-mile of the vehicle while trying to catch up before the crash, he said.

The trooper reported at one point that the vehicle was allegedly going 178 mph. The driver went 32 miles in about 14 minutes, he said. That calculates to an average of 137 mph.

He said the driver went a distance in the 13 minutes from the first call to the accident that would normally take around 30 minutes.

“That’s pretty fast,” he said.

The speed limit where the Corvette crashed is 65 mph, he said.

A 20-year-old Mission, Kansas, woman was also taken to a hospital with suspected serious injuries after the 2026 Chrysler 300 she drove was rear-ended by a 29-year-old Topeka woman driving a 2013 Volkswagen Jetta when she slowed down for the traffic ahead because of the crash. The woman in the Jetta wasn’t injured.

This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 12:33 PM.