{"id":289173,"date":"2026-09-18T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/289173\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T20:26:12","slug":"motorcyclist-dies-in-bethlehem-crash-with-charter-bus-coroner-says-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/289173\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorcyclist dies in Bethlehem crash with charter bus, coroner says (UPDATE)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 28-year-old Slate Belt<\/a> man was killed Thursday evening when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a charter bus on a Bethlehem<\/a> street, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The Lehigh County Coroner’s Office<\/a> has identified the deceased as Samuel Velasquez Jr. of Bangor. He died from multiple blunt force trauma and the death was ruled accidental by Lehigh County Coroner Daniel A. Buglio.<\/a><\/p>\n

Bethlehem Police Captain William Audelo said officers were called just before 9:40 p.m. to the collision in the 2000 block of Industrial Drive, in Bethlehem, Lehigh County. Velasquez was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.<\/p>\n

An investigation later determined the charter bus driver was traveling east on Industrial Drive and attempted to make a left turn into the Trans-Bridge Lines property, 2012 Industrial Drive.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Velasquez was operating his motorcycle west on Industrial Drive. The motorcycle collided with the passenger side of the bus, Audelo said.<\/p>\n

Velasquez suffered serious injuries and was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital\u2013Muhlenberg in Bethlehem, where he was pronounced dead just after 10:15 p.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n

The charter bus was not carrying any passengers at the time of the crash and was returning to the depot. There were no other reported injuries.<\/p>\n

“Investigators are reviewing available video evidence and examining the vehicles, roadway conditions, visibility, and other potential factors that may have contributed to the crash,” Audelo said of the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n

The accident is being investigated by the Bethlehem Police Department’ Major Accident Reconstruction Team; Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office and Lehigh County Coroner’s Office & Forensic Center.<\/p>\n

Read the original article on lehighvalleylive.com<\/a>. Add lehighvalleylive.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 28-year-old Slate Belt man was killed Thursday evening when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,40245,104334,120121,433,120120,120122,19002],"class_list":["post-289173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-blunt-force-trauma","tag-charter-bus","tag-industrial-drive","tag-lehigh-county","tag-samuel-velasquez-jr","tag-velasquez","tag-william-audelo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}