Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Christmas day may forever be tinged with sadness for the family and friends of 18-year-old Andy Case, a resident of Sidney, Kentucky, who died after losing control of the all-terrain vehicle he was driving.

Investigators at the scene said that the crash was likely the result of the front left tire coming off of Case’s vehicle. The tire disengagement apparently caused Case to run the ATV headlong into a tree. Authorities said that the boy was not wearing a helmet.

Case was rushed to South Williamson Appalachian Regional Hospital in South Williamson, Kentucky, where emergency physician Brandon Haake pronounced him dead.

Case attended Belfry High School in Belfry, Kentucky. According to the school principal, who spoke with the Williamson Daily News, Case was well liked by his fellow students.

“The young man was a senior and well liked at the school. I don’t know anyone who didn’t like Andy,” Principal Rod Varney told the Daily News.

“Any time you lose a student it’s devastating to the school. It is a difficult time for everyone,” Varney told the Daily News. “Somebody lost a child, somebody lost a friend and then we all lost a student.”

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Kentucky leads the nation in the number of ATV-related fatalities. The CPSC says that 367 ATV-related deaths were reported in Kentucky in 2006 alone, and incomplete numbers for the following years show that ATV fatalities continue to escalate. Tragically, about one-third of all the reported ATV deaths in Kentucky are children.

Pennsylvania, California, West Virginia, and Texas are other states with an unusually high rate of deaths caused by ATV accidents.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.