The newly elected mayor of Green River, Utah, was killed late Friday when his car was hit head-on by a semitruck, authorities said.
Mayor Ren Hatt, who had just been reelected to a second term in November, was 40.
The accident occurred around 9:40 p.m. Friday as a 2021 Freightliner semi headed west on Highway 6 about eight miles west of Green River with Hatt’s 2020 Hyundai Palisade traveling east, the Utah Department of Public Safety said Saturday in a statement.
“For an unknown reason, the Freightliner drifted into the eastbound lanes and struck the front passenger side (head-on) of the Hyundai,” the Utah Department of Public Safety said.
The semi immediately veered back, to the far right side of the highway, police said. The Hyundai was pushed and ended up on the righthand side of the eastbound lanes. Hatt was killed instantly.
“The investigation is ongoing,” police said. “Impairment is not suspected.”
The 1,000-person town about 140 miles southeast of Provo is known as a jumping-off point for touring Utah’s national and state parks, and for its melons. Tourists and residents alike flock there every September for the festival known as Melon Days.
“We are saddened to share that Mayor Hatt, Ren, was involved in a fatal crash late last night on Highway 6 east of Green River,” wrote the town on its Facebook page. “Mayor Hatt loved this community deeply, and he served it with honesty, kindness, and unwavering commitment. We are grieving alongside his family, friends, and all who knew him.”
His fiance Maria Faye Sykes wrote that “the love of my life, my fiancé and best friend Ren Hatt was killed in a car crash last night,” and asked for “prayers for our families, for me, and for the many, many people who loved him in his far too few 40 years on this earth.”
Hatt graduated in 2014 from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and went on to be a teacher, a position he continued to hold as mayor.
