South Carolina police said Monday that no charges will be filed in the bicycling death of Rachel Giblin, a 15-year-old girl who was struck by a pickup truck during a MS 150 bike ride last September.
Rachel and her brother, Tommy, were riding a tandem bicycle in the Breakaway to the Beach fund-raiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society on Sept. 16, 2006, with their parents.
In the months following the fatality, Highway Patrol investigators determined that Rachel and her brother fell and were hit as the pickup truck passed, Major M.L. Howard told the Charlotte Observer.
(Update: Howard also told the newspaper that the truck “was passing a little too close, and the results were tragic.” Speed was not a factor, he said.
Solicitor Jay Hodge Jr. did not find malicious intent on the driver's part, so he didn't file charges, Howard said.
The girl's parents want the case reopened. The father said witnesses saw the family riding upright as the truck approached.
“We're pretty angry,” he said the newspaper. “In the half-second that the guy went by, there was no reason for our children just to have fallen.”
“We really feel that it was not just one of those things where you're in the wrong place at the wrong time,” his wife said.)
News reports at the time said Rachel's brother and mother were taken to the hospital. The father, Tom Giblin, was riding at the head of the group near Society Hill, South Carolina, when the accident happened on US 15/401.
The Breakaway to the Beach two-day bike ride is a major fund-raising for the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the MS society. It starts in Columbia and finishes in North Myrtle Beach. The ride is scheduled Sept. 15-16 this year.
The Ballantyne-area teen was a student at Charlotte Country Day School. A guestbook for remembrances is available online; also see Tailwind Tandem Club's October newsletter (.pdf), and a story about the memorial services.
Seven states have a law on the books that requires motorists to give a three-foot clearance when they pass a bicycle. South Carolina is not one of those states.
See also: “Tragic weekend for MS 150 bike rides in Oklahoma and South Carolina”
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