NYC Teacher Killed In Oklahoma Crash While Biking Across Country

Newson6 reports an Oklahoma Highway Patrol report says Morris admitted to looking at her phone at the time of the crash.

Another cyclist, 22-year-old Bridget Anderson, was also struck by the vehicle and was in stable condition, police said.

Wanninkhof and Anderson were part of a cross-country Maine-to-Santa Barbara (ME2SB) ride, organized by Bike & Build, a charity that promotes construction of affordable housing throughout the US.

Patrick Wanninkhof, 25, of Key Biscayne, died Thursday. “Bike & Build’s priorities in the aftermath of this tragedy will be to support and work with the Wanninkhof family and the ME2SB trip according to their needs, as well as pass on all pertinent information as it becomes available”.

News6.com said the trooper’s report stated that Wanninkhof and Anderson were riding west when a westbound 2014 Chevy driven by Sarah Morris, 34, of Cordell hit them. A new Oklahoma state law bans texting while driving, but it does not go into effect until November.

Because Patrick Wanninkhof earned an engineering degree from the University of Florida, the older Wanninkhof said he and his wife thought their son would get a job in that field. He soon began teaching app development at Lehman College and physics and computer science at Fordham High School for the Arts.

“We are all shaken by this bad news, and this will be a hard time for everyone in our community”, Bike & Build staff said in a statement.

A New York City high school teacher was killed while biking across the country Thursday. He wrote he joined the bike ride because one his students told him about how her mom couldn’t afford rent and they had been moving between relatives’ houses for places to sleep.

“To fix systemic inequities which burden our nation, we need a systemic approach to fighting poverty,” Wanninkhof wrote. Education reform will be fruitless if we cannot guarantee that every child can return to a safe home in the evening. He was placed there for the last three years through the Teach for America program.

Prior to his untimely death, Wanninkhof had completed 2,390 miles of his scheduled 3,987 mile bike journey.