Officers responded at about 9:27 p.m. to a crash between a car and a bicyclist at the intersection of Rohlwing Road and Campbell Street.
Virginia Coglianese said she and her son were driving home from his hockey practice when they came across a man lying in the roadway with no sign of whoever hit him.
"First instinct was to honk my horn, and then my son said, 'he's hurt he's hurt,'" Coglianese said. "So we jumped out of the car. My son called 911 and I tried to calm the man down."
She estimated two or three minutes later what appeared to be the vehicle who hit the man pulled up to the scene. She said almost simultaneously, Rolling Meadows police arrived.
Coglianese said the man was conscious and talking, but described him as "out of it." Police say Patrick J. Houlihan, 41, of Rolling Meadows was taken to a hospital, but he later died.
"I was surprised... and like shook, very shook," Coglianese said. "I mean, he told me the name of his cat last night when I was by him."
Michael Leino lives on Campbell and says he was walking his dogs Tuesday night and saw Houlihan moments before the crash.
"Bike went by me, and then, you know, I was two blocks away, so took him a while, but then, yeah... got hit right in the corner, and it was terrible, crunching noise," Leino said.
Rolling Meadows police acknowledged the driver may have left the scene of the crash, but came back. Police said, "the driver returned to the scene in a short enough time to alleviate the need to investigate as a hit and run."
"There's no way he didn't know that he hit something bad," Leino said. "You know, I heard it from two blocks away."
Police say the driver of the vehicle is cooperating with authorities, and no charges have been filed as of Wednesday evening.
"My son and I were talking about it that, like, maybe that is the difference," Coglianese said. "A matter of seconds could be the difference."
The crash is currently being investigated by the Rolling Meadows Police Department with assistance from the Major Case Assistance Team's (MCAT) Serious Traffic Accident Reconstruction (STAR) Team.