ST. CLAIR COUNTY — The Illinois State Police has released the identity of a 25-year-old Mt. Vernon man killed in a one-vehicle crash early Sunday morning on Interstate 64 near Scott Air Force Base.

Quovadance R. Cornelius was a passenger in a 2015 Ford Fusion when it struck a light pole at an empty state truck weigh station.

The driver of the Fusion, 25-year-old Demetrius J. Hernandez, of Woodlawn, was seriously injured and was taken to a St. Louis area hospital.

Both men were ejected from the vehicle, with Cornelius suffering fatal injuries. ISP reports that skid marks at the scene indicated the car left the eastbound lanes of the interstate and drove into the weigh station, past the scales and struck the light pole.

The force of the collision split the car in half, leaving half on the pole and sending the other half approximately 10 to 15 feet away.

Hernandez reportedly told a trooper who was first to arrive at the scene that he had been laying in the wreckage for hours, watching cars pass but unable to call for help.

The trooper had been on his way to a call of a man firing a gun in the parking lot of a strip club in Centreville when around 6:30 a.m., he came upon the wrecked Ford Fusion.

A police officer had responded to the call but when the officer ordered the man to drop the weapon he instead reportedly fired at the officer. The officer wasn’t injured but the man fled from the scene.