They were just out for a ride. Ross DeShong, 54, and Paula Young, 50, both of Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania, were on a 2023 Indian motorcycle heading east on Lincoln Way West when a Buick Encore coming the other way made a left turn straight into them. It was around 5:07 on a Saturday afternoon, the kind of hour when you’re not expecting a phone call that changes everything. The front left side of the Buick caught the motorcycle, threw both of them off, and neither one of them got back up. They were pronounced dead at the intersection of Lincoln Way West and Hade Road in St. Thomas Township, Franklin County.
The driver who made that turn was Tanner Hege, 34, of Upper Strasburg. He was headed westbound in his 2014 Buick Encore and was trying to turn left onto Hade Road when his vehicle crossed into the path of DeShong’s motorcycle. Pennsylvania State Police responded to the scene. Hege was taken to Chambersburg Hospital. Two passengers in his vehicle — identified as Alexandria C. Dupre, 30, of Chambersburg, and a 33-year-old woman — walked away without injuries. DeShong and Young did not.
What makes this worse is that both of them were wearing helmets. They did what they were supposed to do. They had their gear on. None of it mattered when a two-ton vehicle swung left without clearing the lane. Being ejected from a motorcycle at highway speed is survivable sometimes. Saturday afternoon, it wasn’t.
State police noted in their report that the crash involves driving under the influence. That’s a significant detail. It sits there in the official documentation alongside the two names of the people who died, and it hasn’t gone away just because no charges had been filed as of Sunday. Investigators said the crash is still under active investigation, which means whatever came next — toxicology, evidence, witness statements — was still being sorted. The silence from the district attorney’s office as of Sunday morning said nothing final. It just meant the work wasn’t done yet.
What is done is Ross DeShong’s life and Paula Young’s life. They were from the same small community, out together on a summer Saturday, and now their families are arranging funerals instead of hearing about the ride. Franklin County sits in south-central Pennsylvania, tucked up near the Maryland line. It’s not a place where fatal crashes happen every weekend. Saturday’s was the kind of wreck that people in St. Thomas Township will talk about for a long time, because it happened at a regular intersection on a regular afternoon and killed two people who were riding legally and carefully.
There are still things Pennsylvania State Police haven’t said publicly. They haven’t confirmed a motive or named contributing factors beyond the DUI notation. They haven’t said who else might face charges. Hege’s exact condition at the hospital was described as injuries of unknown severity when he was transported, and nothing further had been released. What troopers have said is that they’re still investigating, that the case is open, and that the details of exactly what happened in the seconds before impact are still being documented.
Two people went out on a motorcycle on a summer afternoon and did not come home. Their helmets were on. The road was straight. The intersection had a clear line of sight. Whatever Tanner Hege was or wasn’t doing when he turned left at 5:07 p.m. on August 1, 2026, it cost Ross DeShong and Paula Young everything they had left.
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