Evanston IL police officer Daniel Jay Kooi, 40, charged in Hammond IN hit-and-run accident at the Horseshoe Casino

An  Evanston police officer was charged last Friday in Lake Superior Court in connection with a crash in Hammond last August.

Daniel Jay Kooi, 40, of Lansing, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily harm. The incident left the driver of a Suzuki motorcycle seriously injured.

The motorcycle was traveling southeast around 11:30 p.m. Aug. 24 on Indianapolis Boulevard when a gray 2005 Toyota traveling in the opposite direction turned left in front of the motorcycle toward Casino Center Drive at Horseshoe Casino, witnesses told police. The motorcycle had the right of way when the Toyota turned left in front of it, witnesses said. The motorcycle crashed into the passenger side of the car.

The Toyota did not stop following the crash, witnesses told police. Video surveillance from the casino shows the car drive into a parking garage and the driver, later identified as Kooi, get out of the car and walk around it before getting back inside the vehicle and exiting the garage.

Kooi has been employed as an Evanston police officer since 2001, Perry Polinski, the department's communications coordinator, wrote in an email. Kooi was placed on unpaid administrative leave shortly after the crash in August, Polinski wrote.

"The (Evanston) Police Department takes this allegation very seriously and, at the time, felt that this was the most appropriate course of action pending the outcome of the investigation," Polinski wrote.

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