University of Delaware student killed, seven injured after driver hits multiple people with U-Haul truck, officials say
Two people in the U-Haul truck fled after police tried to arrest them, police said.
A University of Delaware student was killed and several other people were injured after a New Castle man drove a U-Haul truck through Newark, Del., police said.
Shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Newark police were alerted to a U-Haul truck parked in a shopping center parking lot in the 200 block of East Main Street that had been rented but not returned when it was due on March 18 and reported stolen, Newark police said in a statement.
Police initially said they found the truck just before 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Soon after police discovered the truck, two people, Gordon Turner, 22, of New Castle, Del. and an unnamed passenger, got in the vehicle and Turner attempted to drive away.
Turner drove over a curb and hit a police vehicle, ignoring police commands to stop while speeding out of the parking lot, police said.
Newark police said they did not start a vehicle pursuit.
The two in the truck continued speeding westbound on East Main Street and a short time later, hit two pedestrians who were near a parked car, police said.
Turner then hit multiple parked cars — one with four people inside and another with one person inside — before the vehicle became disabled on East Main Street, in front of the post office, police said.
Turner’s crashing into parked cars caused a “chain reaction,” police said, with a pedestrian hit by a parked car that was pushed during a crash.
Officers arrived at the scene shortly after and one pedestrian, later identified by police as a 24-year-old woman who was a graduate student at the university, was pronounced dead at the scene. The second pedestrian, also a 24-year-old graduate student, suffered serious injuries, police said, and was taken to a local hospital and is in stable condition.
Another pedestrian went to the hospital with minor injuries and the four people inside that car that was hit were treated for minor injuries.
Police initially said that eight people, including Turner, were injured./
After Turner was taken to a local hospital, treated for his injuries, and released into police custody, he was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and related crimes, police said.
Police found a handgun inside the truck. The passenger has not yet been charged with any crimes.
Police later learned Turner is a fugitive wanted by law enforcement in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Maryland. Turner was charged with fleeing and attempting to elude an officer and related crimes in Lancaster County for a February 2023 incident, according to court records.
Turner is being held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution after failing to pay a $305,500 cash bail, police said.
In a letter to the University of Delaware community, university president Dennis Assanis and vice president for student life José-Luis Riera said that the person killed was a student at the university and that several students were among the injured.
“This is a terrible tragedy for everyone in our UD community,” Assanis and Riera said in the letter. “We speak for the entire university in offering our condolences to the families, friends and classmates of the victims, and keep the other members of our community in our thoughts who may have witnessed the crash and its aftermath.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Cpl. Jon Lee at 302-366-7100 ext. 3462 or [email protected]. Anonymous tips may be submitted through the Newark Police Department’s tips page, where reward information may also be available.