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The Arizona Department of Public Safety confirmed this afternoon what has been assumed since Wednesday: the two unidentified men killed in a car wreck on US 93 Tuesday night were BMX racers Rickey Bates and Gary Dimartine.
Bates, 25, from Florida, was driving the gray 1995 Ford Explorer that collided head on with a DPS vehicle driven by Matthew Uhl, a 46-year-old civilian helicopter pilot with the DPS assigned to Kingman Air Rescue.
Dimartine, 24, was a passenger in Bates’ vehicle. All three men died at the scene.
Bates was the man behind “Banned BMX” videos and products, and rode with the Sputnic BMX and Shadow Conspiracy teams.
Dimartine was also a popular BMX racer.
According to the DPS, Uhl was driving a DPS-owned Chevy Lumina north on the US 93 near milepost 188.
Heading south was Bates and Dimartine in Bates’ Explorer.
Bates, the DPS says, may have been trying to pass a slower vehicle when the SUV went into the southbound lane, colliding with Uhl head-on at a “high rate of speed.”
Uhl was headed to Kingman, where he was scheduled to fly the next day.
“Matt was a true professional. He always had a great attitude and was just the kind of employee you’d want to have. Matt was an exemplary pilot and a terrific guy. This is a painful loss for all of us at DPS,” Sergeant Martyn Fink of the DPS Aviation Unit says.
Uhl, a Chandler resident, is survived by his wife and four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14.
