On August 6, 2026, at approximately 5:06 p.m., the New York State Police responded to a fatal motor vehicle crash on Liberty Road in the town of Montague, Lewis County.<\/p>\n
The investigation determined that two UTVs were stopped northbound on Liberty Road due to one 2023 Yamaha being disabled due to a broken belt.<\/p>\n
The operator of the second UTV, a 2024 Polaris, turned around and attempted to assist with towing the disabled UTV. While doing so, the 2024 Polaris was struck by a northbound 2023 Ram pickup truck operated by Lucas J. Goutermout, 26, of Copenhagen, NY. The impact caused the UTV to spin and overturn.<\/p>\n
The operator of the 2024 Polaris, Michael E. Rounds, 61, of Carthage, NY, was pronounced deceased at the scene.<\/p>\n
Following the collision, the operator of the pickup truck attempted to veer left into the southbound lane and struck a third UTV, a 2017 Polaris, operated by John I. Failing, 80, of Pearl River, NY.<\/p>\n
Failing and Goutermout reported no injuries and remained at the scene.<\/p>\n
A Drug Recognition Expert conducted standardized field sobriety testing on Goutermout, and no signs of impairment were observed.<\/p>\n
The investigation remains ongoing.<\/p>\n
New York State Police were assisted at the scene by Lewis County Search and Rescue and the Lewis County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On August 6, 2026, at approximately 5:06 p.m., the New York State Police responded to a fatal motor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-316561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}