He was a York-area police officer and a Texas cowboy. An ATV crash ended his life too soon.

York Daily Record

Tarkington Prairie, Texas, had become a second home to Brian Torkar. He and his best friend, Mike Georgiou, traveled there each summer to hang out for a few days with their kids and friends.

It was Georgiou’s hometown, a vast and rural section of northern Texas named for the open prairie where cattle once grazed. They were a long way from York County, where both men worked in law enforcement.

In Texas, they could relax the cowboy way: playing horseshoes and darts, hunting wild boar, and riding an ATV.

This was a patrol of a levee along the Codorus Creek, using an ATV. The three- and four-wheelers are used all over the country for professional reasons, often on farms.

Torkar lives life boldly, but he doesn’t approach an ATV that way.

“I’ve always been very cautious on four-wheelers because I’ve seen a lot of four-wheeler crashes in my career,” said Torkar, a corporal with the Pennsylvania State Police. “They are dangerous machines. They’re very powerful. There’s always potential to roll over, so you need to be careful.”

Five years ago, the two men packed up their kids and drove from York County to Texas with Torkar’s ATV in tow.

One night, they celebrated the birthdays of two of their kids on a friend's farm, and as the sun set, they took turns riding the four-wheeler that had made the trip from Pennsylvania. Georgiou finally took his turn, heading out onto the flat farmland surrounding them.

“He was gone a little too long, so we went out to look for him,” Torkar said.

They found him beside the ATV. It had hit a ditch, and Georgiou, who was thrown from the vehicle, didn’t survive the accident. He was 35 years old.

ATV fatalities

This was the scene of a serious ATV crash in 2016. The rider was transported by helicopter for injuries. Accidents are decreasing over the years, but children under 16 make up 21 percent of the injuries.

Texas has the highest number of ATV fatalities in the country, and Pennsylvania is No. 2, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's latest research:

Texas: 773
Pennsylvania: 702
West Virginia: 698
California: 694
Kentucky: 629

There is no clear answer as to why these five states rank highest among fatalities.

"I think it boils down to the number of ATVs we have in Pennsylvania," said Todd Miller, from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

That number is nearly 300,000, he said, and likely another 25 percent more unregistered ATVs are owned for private land use only.

That might be the reason Pennsylvania is high in the statistics, but not all states require ATV registration, like Texas, so no comparison can be drawn. The CPSC's numbers are cumulative from 1984-2014. The years 2015-2018 aren't included in the latest report because ATV deaths are still being reported years after they have occurred.

As far as ATV accidents, there are about 100,000 accidents across the country each year, and about 21 percent of those are children younger than 16, according to the CPSC.

The state DCNR has forms online to report accidents, and it uses newspaper clippings as well as police reports to tally its numbers, said Miller, a natural resource program specialist.

The number of fatalities and accidents is decreasing over the years. The average number of ATV deaths in the U.S. topped out at 832 in 2007 and has decreased to an average of 588 in 2014. Accidents follow a similar decline. Data is still being collected for the years 2015-2018.

"We do see that UTVs and ROVs (recreational off-highway vehicles) appear to have grown in popularity, but we would be speculating on a reason for the decrease in ATV fatalities and we don’t want to do that," a CPSC spokesperson wrote via email.

Mike Georgiou's legacy

When Mike Georgiou (right) told his best friend, Brian Torkar (left), that he hunted boar in Texas without a weapon, Torkar didn't believe it until he saw it for himself. They cornered the feral hog with dogs, tied it up, then typically released the boar back into the wild. Georgiou was a real cowboy, even when he moved North. He died five years ago in Texas in an ATV accident.

Brian Torkar carries his best friend's "brand," an image of cattle horns, as a tattoo on his chest. Georgiou's other friends have done the same.

Georgiou was a special guy, humorous and adventurous, and a cowboy in the North as much as he was one in Texas.

He came to York County for a job after serving in the military, accepting a job with the York Area Regional Police Department.

That's when he met J.R. Myers, a York County cowboy who roped calves on his family's farm in Felton. Myers was in high school when Keith Dyke, a Northern Regional officer and a school resource officer at Red Lion, asked him for a favor.

Dyke had a cowboy from Texas working with the police department who used to ride bulls in Texas. "He was going to quit the police because he missed the Western lifestyle," Myers said.

"I said, 'I'll get him down to the house and get him to rope a little bit,'" Myers said. Georgiou showed up at Myers Performance Horses LLC to learn how to rope calves from a horse. "I saw some potential in Mike, and I saw the joy it brought him."

He became a part of Myers' family. "We became brothers," he said.

After years of riding with Myers, Georgiou fell in love with one of the mares on the farm and wanted to buy her. Myers didn't want to give her up, so he asked his friend to pay half of her worth. They would own her together, and they did without any friction.

Today, that mare is Myers' son's favorite horse, and he rides her every day.

It's fitting. Myers' 3-year-old son is named Joseph Michael for his father and Georgiou.

"There's always that reminder of him," he said. "That's what I have left of Mike."

Torkar holds on to his memories as well. He still goes to Texas each summer to see the friends he made through Georgiou.

And he bought a boat. Georgiou wanted to buy a boat for their duck hunting adventures, but he never had that chance. Torkar bought the boat, and put the cattle horns on the back in memory of his friend.

After five years, it's still painful for Torkar to talk about him.

Torkar said: "I lost my brother and my best friend."

How to be safer on an ATV

The popularity of ATVs is on the rise, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and now UTVs - utility task vehicles - are gaining favor. They're also called side-by-sides or ROVs - recreational off-road vehicles. They're considered safer because they have seat belts and a roll bar and are heavier and wider. They're also not meant for paved roads.

The CPSC said these scenarios are the most common in ATV accidents:

Collision of an ATV with another vehicle: car, truck, ATV, UTV, dirt bike, etc.
Collision of ATV with a stationary object: often a tree, and less commonly other objects, such as rocks, debris, mailbox post, curb, guard rail, parked car, etc.
ATV either overturning or ejecting rider (without an initial collision). In some of these cases, the rider may make no further contact with the ATV, and the victim may receive injuries just from landing on the ground or perhaps from colliding with a stationary object, such as a tree. In some of these instances, the ATV additionally rolls over or strikes the victim.

"People speed, and that’s when problems occur. You bring the speed down, you reduce every risk," said Alain Kaldewaay, an ATV safety instructor for the ATV Safety Institute.

Kaldewaay has a number of "golden rules" for ATV drivers and riders, but his greatest advice is about following the manufacturer's guidelines for the three- and four-wheelers. Manufacturers provide a suggested age for the driver and rider of a vehicle and whether it can handle a passenger.

"You can train all the people in the world, but if family members allow youngsters to ride an ATV under the age that they should ride, you’re going to have trouble," he said.

Some ATV owners also add danger with an after-market seat for a passenger, he warned.

"It’s just not safe. Once you veer from the manufacturer’s recommendation, that’s where it goes wrong," he said.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission provides these warnings for ATV owners:

Do not drive ATVs on paved roads.
Do not allow a child under 16 to drive or ride an adult ATV.
Do not drive ATVs with a passenger or ride as a passenger.
Always wear a helmet and other protective gear such as eye protection, boots, gloves, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.
Take a hands-on safety training course.

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