Headline Surfer® graphic / NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- A 30-year-old Edgewater man was killed on this Christmas holiday when he struck a Palm tree with his motorcycle and splitting it in half while "traveling at a high rate of speed in the 500 block of North Riverside Drive, cops said.
Matheu W. Laurrell was pronounced dead at the scene. He was not wearing a helmet.
Here's a synopsis of what happened in the fatal accident at 1:50 p.m. as reported by New Smyrna Beach Police Sgt. Valerie Joyce: NSBPD Officers and Paramedics responded to a report of a motorcyclist who struck a tree.
Paramedics pronounced the rider deceased at the scene. After interviewing witnesses and examining the crash site, a preliminary investigation revealed Laurrell was traveling at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed into a palm tree which split in half upon impact.
The make and model of the motorcycle he was riding was not included in a press release.
Short Bio
Henry Frederick is publisher of Headline Surfer®, the award-winning 24/7 internet news outlet covering the Daytona Beach-Sanford-Orlando metro area via HeadlineSurfer.com since 2008. A longtime cops & courts reporter focused on breaking news & investigative reporting, Frederick is among the Sunshine State's most prolific daily news reporters, having amassed close to a hundred award-winning byline stories nearly evenly split in print and digital platforms. Frederick earned his Master of Arts in New Media Journalism with academic honors from Full Sail University in Winter Park in February 2019. He was a metro reporter with the Daytona Beach News-Journal for nearly a decade and then served as a city editor for the Taunton Daily Gazette in Taunton, Mass, while maintaining a residence in Central Florida. Prior to moving to Florida, Frederick was a metro reporter for the Rockland Journal-News in West Nyack, NY, for seven years. Headline Surfer was named the Sunshine State's top internet news site by the Florida Press Club in 2018.