Good morning, Chicago.

A three-car crash killed four Buffalo Grove High School students in Wheeling on Tuesday night, a cataclysm that sounded to neighbors like an explosion that plunged the neighborhood into darkness when a light pole fell on electric lines.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Ellie Estrada, 17, who went to middle school with two of the students. “It was like a nightmare.”

She left a bouquet of red, yellow and white flowers at the growing memorial at the crash scene, among many who remembered the teens at the crash site throughout the day.

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Family, friends and fellow officers gathered to remember slain Chicago police Officer Aréanah Preston at her funeral Wednesday, praising her commitment to the city and her job, which ended in the ultimate sacrifice. Inside the service at Trinity United Church of Christ, Preston’s mother, Dionne Mhoon, first thanked God for “loaning us this angel.”

“I gave my baby everything I had, and then some. I was determined to invest in her, so in return she could invest in the world. And Aréanah did just that,” Mhoon said. “Death is only a tragic thing if you have not lived. My baby lived. I am because of her. I pray for peace in our homes. I pray for peace in our communities. And I pray for peace in my heart.”

Illinois could be on a path toward getting a new state flag after lawmakers sent Gov. J.B. Pritzker a bill that would establish a commission to decide if the emblem needs a makeover and, if so, what it should look like.

The current state flag features a bald eagle with the state motto in its mouth standing on a rock bearing the year of the seal’s creation and of the state’s incorporation. It’s almost a carbon copy of the state seal.

Riders on the 63rd Street bus on Chicago’s South Side will see some electric buses running this week. The route will be the second to get electric buses, which are already running on the busy #66 Chicago Avenue bus that runs through the West Side.

Meteorologists called Tuesday evening’s forecast on the lakefront a “pneumonia front,” comparing it to the chills one experiences when getting ill.

Coincidentally, Cubs fans also have been going through a pneumonia front after a feel-good start to the 2023 season evaporated into thin air, leaving them cold and confused and looking for someone to blame, writes Paul Sullivan.

Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” written by Paul Schrader, connects directly to Schrader’s most recent trio of pictures begun with the excellent “First Reformed” with Ethan Hawke; the Oscar Isaac-headed drama “The Card Counter”; and now, starring Joel Edgerton, “Master Gardener.”

Old-fashioned in its pacing, but not really part of any fashion, new or old, other than Schrader’s, it’s a steely, flawed but fascinating affront to most anything else playing theaters right now, writes critic Michael Phillips.