Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A man and a woman were killed when their speeding Harley-Davidson motorcycle crashed into a fence Tuesday night near Gap in Pennsylvania



6th fatal motorcycle crash in 2015
Man and woman killed when speeding motorcycle crashes into fence near Gap

RYAN ROBINSON and JENNIFER TODD
Updated 2 hrs ago


A man and a woman were killed when their speeding motorcycle crashed into a fence Tuesday night near Gap, authorities said.

Names of the operator and passenger have not been released because police are notifying their family members, state police Trooper Justin D. Marquis said in a press release.

Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni said only that the victims are a man and a woman and their identifications will be released once family members are notified.



Their Harley-Davidson cycle was traveling at a high rate of speed when it crashed into a fence at a left curve in the road in the 400 block of School Lane Road, Marquis said. It happened at around 8:15 p.m. near Salisbury Elementary School.

A deputy coroner pronounced both riders dead at the scene, Diamantoni said.

The two are the sixth and seventh people killed in the six fatal motorcycle accidents in the county so far this year, newspaper records show. Five people were killed in the five fatal motorcycle crashes in 2014.

Tuesday’s motorcycle wreck was the first in the county that killed more than one person since 2010, newspaper records show. That year, 19 people died on motorcycles here, including seven in just four days.

Five motorcyclists were killed and a sixth injured when three motorcycles collided with a van on Route 72 between Auction Road and Graystone Road in Penn Township June 27, 2010. Killed were Joshua Pennington, 27, of East Earl Township; Linda Lapp and her husband, Samuel, both 48 and residents of New Holland; and Amy Wilhelm, 50, and her husband, Dennis "Butch" Wilhelm, 43, of Manheim Township. A sixth motorcyclist, 27-year-old Kristin Skowood of East Earl Township, survived.


On June 24 that year, two 20-year-old friends from New Providence, Scott Matthew Bachman and Jeremy Stephen Rineer, died when their motorcycle hit a tree that had been knocked across Marticville Road, Martic Township, by a summer storm.

Forty people have died in traffic accidents in the county this year, newspaper records show. Twenty-nine died by the same date in 2014, according to newspaper records.