No word on Marion couple injured in freak accident
Staff writer
Little information is available on how a Marion couple, Wayne and Barbara Akers, both 75, are doing after a freak accident June 6 while they were pedaling west along US-36 as part of Biking Across Kansas.
A half a mile west of McDonald, the Akerses were struck by a tire that came loose from an oncoming trailer being pulled by a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado driven by Phillip Cole, 54, Granby, Montana.
Both the Akerses were taken with suspected serious injuries to Rawlins County Health Center in Atwood, where they were treated in the emergency room before being transferred to Good Samaritan hospital in Kearney, Nebraska.
On Friday, a nurse there asked who was calling, put a reporter on hold, then returned to the phone and said, “We don’t have anybody by that name here.” She would not answer further questions.
The Akerses were among 500 bikers registered for this year’s 483-mile Biking Across Kansas route across northern Kansas from the Colorado border near St. Francis to the Missouri border near Troy.
Oberlin resident Barry Curry, who also rode in Biking Across Kansas, said he rode past the accident scene while emergency vehicles and the Akers’ bikes were still there.
“I did not see the accident,” Curry said. “All the emergency vehicles went by us five or 10 minutes earlier, going to the scene. The bikes where still lying along the roadside as we went past.
“All the event manager reported at the nightly meeting was that an incident happened. I asked him, but he did not know much or was not telling.”
McDonald is 20 miles east of St. Francis, and the Akerses were riding west at the time. The route went west to east.
Curry said he saw the bikes being loaded into a sheriff’s truck and they appeared to have been destroyed.
The couple purchased a home in Marion in 2015. No lights were on in the house Friday and nobody answered the doorbell.