Man Dies in Motorcycle Crash After Police Break Off Chase

A man was killed in a motorcycle crash over the weekend. Police had previously been pursuing him, but broke off the chase when the speeds became dangerous.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland said in a press release that 24-year-old Jonathan Billings of Windham died when his speeding bike went off Route 27 in New Sharon and ended up in a field, where he hit a fence post. Billings wasn't wearing a helmet.

Farmington Police had tried to stop the motorcycle along Route 27, but it sped off at over 100 miles per hour, about 1 a.m. Because of the dangerous speed, police lost track of the bike immediately and didn't chase it. Trooper Jed Malcore said a landowner along Route 27 discovered the bike in his field and Billings' body nearby, on Sunday evening at around 6 pm.

It was a deadly weekend on Maine's roads with six deaths since Friday night. Four of those fatal accidents involved motorcycles. A woman died in Durham when her motorcycle crashed along Route 125, and a Fort Kent man was killed when his motorcycle collided with another one along Route 161 in Fort Kent. Both of those crashes were on Sunday. On Friday night, a man was killed when his motorcycle struck a deer on the Hammet Road in Enfield at around 9:30 p.m.

On Saturday, 24-year-old Arthi Nandhakumar of Massachusetts was killed when her husband swerved to avoid a small animal that had darted out into the roadway in Acadia National Park. The other highway death was the driver of a car that collided with a tractor trailer on Route 117 in Buckfield Sunday afternoon.