One utility worker killed, 3 injured in crash on White Horse Pike

One utility worker was killed and three others were injured in Camden County on Wednesday morning as a driver crashed into New Jersey American Water employees working on a portion of the White Horse Pike, police said.

The crash occurred just before 10 a.m. in the borough of Magnolia, said Police Chief John Huston, when a driver hit a parking curb, hit a bush, and drove into the blocked-off work zone in the northbound lane of the busy roadway, striking the workers.

The driver then hit another vehicle and a sanitation truck, officials said. The drivers of both vehicles and the Waste Management truck remained on the scene following the crash, Huston said.

One New Jersey American Water worker was pronounced dead at the scene, while another was taken to Cooper University Hospital in critical condition, officials said. Two other employees and the drivers of the vehicles were taken to Jefferson Hospital in Stratford with minor injuries. None was identified Thursday.

The four workers were struck while installing a meter pit, a New Jersey American Water spokesperson said in a statement. “Our focus is on caring for our employees and their impacted families and friends,” the spokesperson said.

By Wednesday afternoon, the usually bustling section of White Horse Pike near a Produce Junction and McDonald’s remained closed to traffic between Warwick and Evesham Roads, as firefighters behind crime scene tape hosed off the pavement and removed a white sheet from the pavement. Onlookers huddled in the nearby Colombo Liquors parking lot, some crying and hugging, while workers in hard hats and neon vests were clustered across the street.

“It wasn’t even like a boom, it was like metal ripping,” said an employee of an adjacent business who asked to remain unidentified due to privacy concerns, describing the sound of the crash that rattled his shop. When he looked outside, the employee said, he saw the two utility workers on the ground in the middle of the roadway.

Huston noted that pedestrian crashes are not uncommon along the busy section of the White Horse Pike, adding that police from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to the Pinelands have ramped up ticketing of distracted drivers along the roadway in efforts to make the stretch safer.

To the loved ones of the American Water worker killed while doing his job, Huston offered his sympathy.

“I feel for the family,” the police chief said. “The family is absolutely devastated. … I honestly don’t know how they’re gonna grieve.”