30. Bike Week 2009: Third fatality reported near Oak Hill

Originally posted Tue, 2009-03-03 09:22

NSBNWEWs.net video by Sera Frederick. Bike Week 2009 had one local biker fatality during the motorcycle rally. Check out our video introducing Bike Week.

OAK HILL -- A dead biker was found just before 6 a.m. in a wooded area just south of the Oak Hill city limits, according to the authorities.

A search was under way three hours earlier after Ronald Courtney, 47, of New Smyrna Beach reportedly called a friend on his cell phone to report he had crashed and suffered a broken leg.

His motorcycle was found in 6 inches of water in a ditch, which eventually led searchers to his body in woods. Courtney had been riding north on U.S. 1, two miles south of Oak Hill near Fullington Grove Road, just after 11 p.m. Monday, when he apparently went down.

Troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol don't believe any other vehicles were involved. The Sheriff's Office was unble to locate him because he couldn't give a location to the friend, except to say he was near a bridge and then three hours later, a co-worker at the Kennedy Space Center called the Volusia County Fire Services, which contacted the Sheriff's Office and an overnight search was conducted.

Sheriff's deputies honed in on the cell phone Courtney had with him and eventually located him about 10 yards from the bike, which was submerged in the watery ditch.

Courtney is the third biker fatality so far of Bike Week 2009, the 10-day motorcycle rally that began Friday and ends Sunday, expected to draw 600,000. The highway patrol is investigating the fatality.