Family: Munhall man in UTV crash died doing what he loved
For as long as his family and friends had known him, Kyle Stramaski loved anything with an engine.
“He was at the racetrack with his grandfather two days after he was born,” said his father, Brian Stramaski. “He loved it.”
His friend, Sara Mitchell, first met Kyle three years ago when both began their education — she as an operator, Kyle as a large equipment mechanic — as apprentices with the operating engineers’ union.
“A total motorhead,” Ms. Mitchell. “He lived it. It was like his language.”
Kyle, 22, of Munhall, was enjoying the recreational end of that passion on Sunday, driving his utility terrain vehicle — his “buggy” as he referred to the UTVs — with a large group of friends through the trails in the woods of South Park.
After an afternoon enjoying the outdoors, Kyle — who was known to regularly check his vehicle to make sure it was in safe condition
and wear his harness seatbelt — was headed home at about 5:30 p.m. and was about to load his UTV onto his Chevy Silverado pickup truck when something went tragically wrong and Kyle was killed in an accident in his UTV.
“From what I understand, he was trying to load his buggy on his truck, hit the gas and something snapped, and he rolled the buggy,” his father said. “The axle broke or something.”
“And we’re told he didn’t have [his harness] on,” Mr. Stramaski said, “maybe because he was getting ready to get [the UTV] on the truck and didn’t think he needed it.”
All of that is why Ms. Mitchell, who said she rode in UTVs with Kyle many times over the last three years, said she was in “disbelief.”
Even though he could seem indestructible and fearless — “Always willing to try anything,” Ms. Mitchell said — “He always checked his equipment before he went out.”
The South Park Police Department, and the South Hills Area Council of Governments Crash Team, were still investigating the crash on Monday and would not answer questions about the accident.
The accident occurred along the roadway near the intersection of Piney Fork and Snowden roads in South Park, not in the nearby woods where Kyle and his friends had been riding offroad in vehicles sometimes referred to as “side-by-sides” because they typically have two seats where people can sit next to each other.
Off-roading in his buggy with his friends — something Kyle documented through many photographs on his Facebook page — was just one of the motorhead passions that filled not only his career but his life.
“He had just gotten back from a truck pull with his friends this weekend and was headed to another one in two weeks in Tennessee,” said his father.
His maternal grandfather had been taking Kyle to the Lernerville racetrack, teaching Kyle the joys of the mechanics of modified racecars and go-carts since he was born, Mr. Stramaski said.
Those interests led to a job working in a body shop after he graduated from Steel Valley High School in 2017. But after Kyle tested well for the operating engineer’s apprenticeship program three years ago, he began learning the trade as a mechanic for big equipment like loaders, haulers, excavators and others.
“He was less than two years from making about $50 an hour” when he graduated from the apprenticeship program, his father said.
As tragic as it is to lose his son at such a young age, Mr. Stramaski said he takes solace in knowing that Kyle “was doing something he really enjoyed doing [when he died] and he was there with his friends. I just feel so bad for his friends who had to be there to see that. I want to be there for them.”
In addition to his father, Kyle is survived by his mother, Sheri Hawthorn; his stepmother, Lori Stramaski; his brother, Dylan; his stepbrother Dustin Vargo; and two step-sisters, Hope McAfee and Jess Freuden.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been set.
Ms. Mitchell set up a GoFundMe.com fundraiser to help defray his funeral expenses. It had already exceeded the initial goal of $5,000 by Monday afternoon.