FRANKLIN, NJ—A New Brunswick man was killed late Saturday afternoon after his car slammed head on into another vehicle near Hamilton Street, according to Franklin police.
Officers responded to the scene around 5 p.m. and found 49-year-old Mark Byrd of New Brunswick, unresponsive in his 1997 Mitsubishi Galant.
Byrd’s southbound car veered across Franklin Boulevard’s center line where it slammed into the 2006 Toyota Sienna, carrying driver Tracy Araque, 45-year-old Monmouth Junction woman, and her 15-year-old daughter, Franklin Township Police Department spokesman Sgt. Philip Rizzo said.
According to Rizzo, Byrd was pulled from the wreckage by arriving officers who then began lifesaving efforts. He was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where he was pronounced dead an hour after the accident.
The occupants of the Toyota Sienna were treated at the scene for minor injuries for complaints of pain, Rizzo said.
Franklin Boulevard was shut down in both directions for roughly four hours while members of the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Team and Franklin Township Police Department’s Traffic Safety Bureau investigated the crash and the initial cause of it.
Anyone with information regarding the accident is asked to contact Cpl. Michael Deutchman of the Franklin Township Police Department’s Traffic Safety Bureau at (732)-878-5533, ext. 3110, or the Prosecutor’s Office TIPS hotline at (888)-577-TIPS (8477).
Charlie is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, and the winner of the Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism. He is a proud Rutgers University journalism graduate, a community organizer, and a former independent candidate for mayor of New Brunswick.
