Jacob and Joshua Hershey had just graduated from Red Land High School, where they both played football.
Now, instead of celebrating graduation and new beginnings, a community is mourning the loss of one of their own.
“I saw something red shoot across the driveway, and I heard this loud, it wasn’t really a crash, it was more like a pop,” said neighbor Bob Hardie.
The ‘something red’ that Hardie saw was a Corvette driven by 18-year-old Jacob Hershey.
His twin brother, Joshua, was in the passenger seat when tragedy struck.
“It left the roadway, struck a culvert on the eastbound side and then impacted a rock,” said Sargent Steven Lutz with the Newberry Township Police Department.
“I looked down and noticed that the rock that had been on the corner of my driveway wasn’t there any longer and I started over towards the next door neighbor’s house and realized that there was a car in the front yard there, upside down and on fire,” Hardie said.
“He reached in and grabbed him and drug him out through the space that was in there,” Hardie said. “The other person, the passenger, had gotten thrown out and was laying right next to the car so we got a piece of plywood from the man next door and went down and rolled him on the plywood and drug him away from the car.”
Joshua died at the scene and Jacob was taken to York Hospital where he is in satisfactory condition.
Friends of the brothers have been stopping by the crash scene to pay their respects to Joshua, leaving behind everything from flowers to a football jersey.
The brothers were less than a half mile away from their home when they crashed.
“It’s a shame; boys that young with that much potential and you know, just done,” Hardie said.
We spoke to Dr. Ryan Argot with the West Shore School District. He said their thoughts and sympathies are with the Hershey family and that school counselors would be on site to offer their support to grieving students and staff.
An autopsy is scheduled for Joshua on Tuesday.