A twisted and broken front wheel of a motorcycle shows the force of the impact from a head-on collision with another motorcycle on an unimproved road near Gate 29 of Barnes Regional Airport. (File photo by chief photographer Frederick Gore)
WESTFIELD — Ward 6 Councilor Christopher Crean will request the City Council to approve a motion petitioning Mayor Daniel M. Knapik to appropriate an additional $10,000 to the Police Department for enforcement of ATV activity.
Crean said this morning that ATV activity is getting out of hand in his ward which has a great deal of open space and wooded areas, with numerous trails use by ATV riders.
Many of those trails run along the ridges of the East Mountain Range and between the Barnes Regional Airport and East Mountain Road.
“We’ve had this problem before, five or six years ago and we thought we took care of it through enforcement and education,” Crean said. “It’s getting worse and worse. We’re seeing vehicles parked all over the place and ATVs operating on private property. They are not local people. They’re people coming into the city with trailers of ATVs. We don’t want to become the destination place for this kind of activity. I’m hearing it from my constituents.”
Crean said that he, At-large Councilor James R. Adams, City Advancement Officer Jeff Daley and Police Chief John Camerota met earlier this week to discuss options to deal with the problem.
“The ATV team is in place at the Police Department and the chief is already on board with increased enforcement and education which will begin soon if not this weekend. I’m requesting the $10,000 for the police overtime account so we don’t burn all of that on enforcement.”
Crean said that Daley will coordinate with security at the 104th Air National Guard to report vehicles, especially those with trailers and ATVs being operated near the airport.
“We also don’t want to see a fatal accident again in which two people died,” Crean said.
Crean is making that motion the day after a second victim succumbed to injuries sustained in an ATV collision in a wooded area of Ward 6 between Barnes Regional Airport and the East Mountain Country Club.
The Oct. 14, 2012 ATV collision took a second life when Luis Gonzalez, 22, of Holyoke, succumbed to his injures while being cared for at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. Carlos Colon, 22, of Holyoke died shortly after the accident which occurred while riding with others in a wooded area that includes a number of trails, sandpits, the Northampton lateral of the Tennessee natural gas pipeline and an access road for a city waterline.
Lt. Jerome Pitoniak, the commander of the Westfield Police Department’s Traffic & Safety Bureau, said that “at least seven” motocross style ‘dirt bikes’ were operating at the area at the time of the crash, which was reported at 5:47 p.m.
Pitoniak said that two motorcycles were coming down a hill when another approached from the other direction. He said that one of the operators “got out of the way” of the approaching dirt bike but, for an unknown reason, the other struck the approaching motorcycle.
“For whatever reason, those two didn’t see each other so they basically hit each other head on,” Pitoniak said.
Colon was transported to Noble Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Pitoniak said that the access road allows for a direct approach to the area of the sand pits, so emergency personal were not delayed when they responded to the call.
He said that officers David Arroyo and Gary Hagar were the first to arrive at the crash scene, where they found an East Mountain Country Club employee performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Colon.
The officers took over the CPR until the ambulance arrived moments later.
The crash was investigation by Westfield police and the State Environmental Police.
