A 19-year-old Crooksville man was killed Wednesday afternoon after his pickup truck crossed into the path of a northbound semi-truck on State Route 13 near Somerset, marking the second fatal crash on the same highway corridor in as many days. AJ T. Roberts was pronounced dead at the scene, while the truck driver walked away with only minor injuries.
According to WHIZ, Roberts was driving a 2018 Dodge Ram 1500 southbound on State Route 13 when he traveled left of the centerline and struck a 2024 Freightliner Cascadia heading northbound. The semi was driven by 42-year-old Erhan Icyer of Chicago, Illinois, who refused EMS transport at the scene after suffering only minor injuries. The Ohio State Highway Patrol's Lancaster Post responded to the crash near State Route 757 in Reading Township, and emergency crews were dispatched to the scene at approximately 3:45 p.m., according to 10TV.
The Ohio Department of Transportation closed State Route 13 in both directions near mile marker 28.1, just north of Somerset, following the collision, per a statement from ODOT District 5. The highway patrol was assisted at the scene by the Perry County Coroner's Office, Somerset Fire and EMS, Reading Township Fire and EMS, the Perry County Sheriff's Office, A&L Towing, and Eitel's Towing, the station's report notes.
Second Deadly SR 13 Crash in Two Days
Roberts' death came just one day after a separate fatal crash involving a tractor-trailer claimed three lives on the same highway in nearby Knox County, when a van ran a stop sign and collided with a semi, as Hoodline previously reported. That crash killed three Dutch nationals traveling in a passenger van. The back-to-back tragedies underscore a grim concentration of deadly commercial truck crashes along the 166-mile corridor, which, per Wikipedia, stretches across seven counties from Athens County to Lake Erie at Huron and ranks as Ohio's tenth-longest state highway.
The crash also arrived on the heels of a soaked landscape. Heavy mid-August rainfall drenched Perry County in the days before the collision, with nearby Crooksville logging up to 10 inches of rain in a single week, a detail Hoodline reported in its coverage of a separate fatal falling-tree incident tied to the same storms. The dossier does not confirm whether road saturation played any role in Wednesday's crash, and the investigation remains active.
Crash Falls Within Deadliest Summer Stretch
Roberts' death occurred during the Ohio State Highway Patrol's annual “100 Deadliest Days of Summer” campaign, which runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day and targets the period when troopers see increased traffic volume and elevated fatal crash rates among young drivers, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The agency reported 351 fatal crashes and 384 deaths statewide during that same summer stretch in 2025.
Statewide data finalized in May 2025 by the Ohio Traffic Safety Office shows that 72% of all teen-related fatal traffic crashes in Ohio that year were the fault of the teen driver, with 72% of those at-fault drivers falling in the 18-to-19 age bracket. Crossing the centerline is listed by the highway patrol as one of the top contributing factors in fatal crashes statewide, alongside running off the roadway, unsafe speed, and failure to yield. Under Section 4511.25 of the Ohio Revised Code, vehicles are legally required to stay on the right half of the roadway except when overtaking, turning left, or navigating an obstruction.
Perry County's Shifting Crash Trends
Perry County recorded 577 total traffic crashes in 2025, a 37.7% jump from 419 crashes the year before, even as annual traffic fatalities in the county fell from 11 in 2024 to just 4 in 2025, according to crash data compiled by ThatCarHitMe.com. Roberts' death adds to that toll for 2026 and follows other recent fatal crashes the highway patrol has investigated in the county, including a 2024 collision that killed an 82-year-old Crooksville woman and another that killed a Zanesville man after his vehicle struck a barn.
Investigators have not released any additional findings beyond the initial determination that Roberts crossed left of center into the path of Icyer's semi. The Ohio State Highway Patrol's Lancaster Post continues to investigate the crash, and no further details on a possible cause — whether mechanical, medical, or otherwise — have been made public.
