Good Samaritan ‘died a hero’
Motorist was hit by vehicle after stopping to help crash victims
Lloyd Musick was driving south on Route 309 in Lynn Township on Tuesday night when he came upon an overturned truck that had just been in a crash. He stopped his vehicle and joined two others to help out the victims in the wreck, authorities said.
Musick didn’t know the people involved in the 5:30 p.m. crash at Route 309 and Mountain Road at the base of Blue Mountain, but he was the type of person who would help anyone in need, according to those who knew him.
As Musick and others helped crash victims, a minivan driving south on Route 309 hit the three Good Samaritans, injuring two of them and killing Musick, 49, of Summit Hill, Carbon County, authorities said.
On a GoFundMe page, Musick’s daughter, Kaitlyn, describes her father as “a firefighter, a husband, a father, a brother, a friend to anyone who needed one, and a proud pappy. He was such a caring man with a big sense of humor.”
Musick said her father was on his way to pick up her brother in Schnecksville when he happened on the crash.
Police said a minivan attempted to cross Route 309 from Mosserville to Mountain roads, and the front of the minivan struck the rear driver’s side door of a pickup truck, overturning the truck onto the shoulder of Route 309 southbound.
Three vehicles passing by the wreckage pulled over, and occupants “exited their vehicles in an attempt to help at the crash scene,” police said. Another minivan traveling south on Route 309 hit those three vehicles, killing Musick and injuring two others. One was seriously injured and flown to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
Lehigh County Coroner Eric Minnich said Musick died of
blunt force injuries and his manner of death was ruled an accident.
“Being the amazing person he is, he stopped to help the people involved in the accident,” Kaitlyn Musick said on the online fundraiser. “He died helping someone he didn’t even know. … My father died a hero.”
An accident reconstruction team examined the scene, and the Lehigh County district attorney’s office is involved in the investigation. State police have not identified the others who were injured or the drivers of the other vehicles involved.
The intersection of Route 309 and Mountain Road/ Mosserville Road has seen the most crashes in Lynn Township over the past five years, according to PennDOT data. In 15 crashes, one person was seriously hurt, and another 15 people were injured.
The last fatal crash at the intersection came in 2001, when a car on Mountain Road ran a stop sign and broadsided a van carrying migrant workers to an Allentown-area farm.
Two men were thrown from the van and killed, and 14 other people were injured. The force of the crash knocked the van off the road and into a cornfield in the southwest corner of the intersection.