Two Milligan University cyclists were killed and seven more were injured Wednesday morning when a driver struck their training group on a rural highway in East Tennessee, in a crash prosecutors say was the result of reckless driving.
Sophomores Haylan Engdahl and Brayden Rogers were part of an 11-rider training session when the group was hit just before 9 a.m. on Highway 19E in Hampton, roughly 11 miles from campus, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Seven injured riders were taken to Johnson City Medical Center. Four were in critical condition in the surgical intensive care unit and two were stable, trauma director Dr. Bracken Burns said; a seventh was evaluated and released. The injured athletes have not been publicly identified.
“We are profoundly shocked and saddened to share that members of our cycling team were in an accident involving a vehicle this morning while cycling,” Milligan University said in a statement. “There are no words to adequately describe this level of loss.”
Charges and the investigation
John Benfield, 69, of Newland, North Carolina, has been charged with two counts of vehicular homicide by recklessness and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle by recklessness, First Judicial District Attorney General Steven Finney said. Benfield is being held in the Carter County jail, and Finney said further charges are possible as the investigation continues.
Prosecutors have not said whether the driver is suspected of being impaired, and released few details about how the collision unfolded. Finney was firm on one point: the riders were not at fault. “This is an elite cycling team. It’s not a bunch of club guys getting together to ride,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Today has been an extraordinarily difficult day for a lot of people in upper East Tennessee,” the Tennessee Highway Patrol said. “Families have lost loved ones. Others are waiting for news about people who were hurt.”
Two riders remembered
Engdahl, from Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, had recently returned to training after breaking his femur in a crash in March. Jeff Bogaczyk, head of school at Christian Life School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Engdahl was a student, described him to ABC7 Chicago as “a beautiful person, infectious smile, magnetic personality, loved life.”
Rogers, a sophomore at the private Christian university, was from Huntsville, Alabama. USA Cycling said its “hearts go out to the two student-athletes whose lives were taken far too soon,” as well as to the injured riders.
The crash is the second time in four years that a Milligan athlete has been killed while training on a public road. Sophomore runner Eli Cramer was struck and killed by a drunk driver in Lightfoot, Virginia, in March 2022 while on a pre-meet run with two teammates; the driver was sentenced to 12 years in prison in April 2023.
Reporting in this story is based on statements from the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the district attorney’s office, Milligan University and USA Cycling, and on coverage by the New York Post. The photographs are stock file images, not photographs of the events described.
