EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah, June 5, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — The Utah County Sheriff’s Office has released the names of a man and woman killed when they were struck, head on, by a pickup truck involved with another vehicle in a road rage exchange Sunday.
The driver and passenger killed in the Porsche were Rodney Michal Salm, 48, of Salt Lake City, and Michaela Himmleberger, age 47, of Holladay.
“Salm and Himmleberger were completely uninvolved in the road rage incident except at the point where the driver of the F-150 lost control and crashed head on into the Porsche,” says a UCSO statement.
“A determination on any charges against the drivers involved in the road rage is still pending. If anyone witnessed this crash or the road rage incident but has not already provided a statement to Investigators, please call the Utah County Sheriff’s Office Investigations Bureau at 801-851-4010.
Sgt. Spencer Cannon, spokesman for the Utah County Sheriff‘s Office, told Gephardt Daily that calls reporting the crash came to dispatch at about 12:30 p.m. Sunday. Emergency responders went to the scene, on state Route 73 near mile marker 30.
“Down in the city center, there were two vehicles that got involved in some kind of road rage incident,” Cannon told Gephardt Daily. “It kind of continued there, and it looks like one of them was a little bit more of an aggressor than the other one was, but they were still both involved in it.”
Those vehicles, the Ford pickup and a Nissan Maxima passenger car, were headed east on the road, which has only one lane in each direction. Each had one male occupant. A Porsche carrying the two victims was headed west, Cannon said.
“The driver of one vehicle (the Ford pickup) got into the right-hand emergency lane and pulled up next to the (Nissan Maxima) car, and rammed the car. That car slowed down and prepared to stop. The other vehicle lost control and went over the centerline, and went head-on into the westbound car (the Porsche), and the two occupants of the westbound car are the ones who were killed.
“And they weren’t even part of this,” Cannon said. “They were just innocently driving through the area on a Sunday afternoon, and this happens to them.”
Cannon said he did not believe the man in the Nissan was injured. The man driving the pickup was taken to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Cannon said that the cost innocent victims paid for the bad decisions of other drivers “is a story that needs to be told.”
