Texting driver crashes into

Jim Carney’s son’s home

Will & Heather Carney

A texting driver crashed his car into the St. Louis suburb home of Will Carney, son of BJ reporter Jim Carney, and Will's wife, Heather. 

Writes Jim:

"Thank God nobody was hurt. Lots of damage to the house and garage and new car in garage. DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE DAMMIT!"

Will supervises engineers for Amtrak out of St. Louis. He began working as an Amtrak engineer in 2012. 

Will and Heath moved in December to a suburb west of St. Louis. 
He was in Chicago when the crash happened. Heather was home. 

Jim's oldest son, Will, lived in Peninsula and was Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway superintendent of the train that goes from the Akron Northside station to the Rockside station in Independence. 

Will started volunteering for the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway when he was a middle school student. He worked as a railroad engineer and later as a safety trainer for about 12 years after high school on a variety of railroads in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania before taking the job in the Valley.

Uh-oh, Jim is texting
and drinking. 

Jim's other sons and wife & BJ reporter Katie Byard's stepsons are Patrick Carney, who has a ton of Grammy Awards as part of the Black Keys band and lives in New York City with second wife Emily Ward; and Michael, Columbus College of Art and Design grad with a Grammy for his Black Keys album art who lives in Brooklyn with Joanna Grant. 

The Carney boys are all Firestone High graduates, as is Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach. Their paternal grandparents were Wheeling, West Virginia native William "Bill" James Carney, who died in 2010, and Madge Slate Carney, a former Army nurse who passed away in 1995.

Jim's siblings are Patsy Carney Hughes, who died in 1997, and Ralph Carney (who lives in San Francisco with Deena Zacharin and is the father of Hedda Carney).   


Previously, Patrick was wed to Cleveland Scene and former BJ reporter Denise Grollmus.