DUSHORE — Responding to a violent crash Tuesday afternoon, members of the Dushore Volunteer Fire Company were heartbroken when they arrived and realized that a a former fire chief, Frank Yonkin, and his wife were both killed in the accident.

The crash occurred just inside Bradford County, at Route 220 and Harney Road, about two miles north of here, at 3:40 p.m.

Bradford County Coroner James Bowen said Yonkin, 75, who was driving a Ford sedan, and a passenger, his wife, Bonnie, who turned 70 just last week, were both killed instantly when their vehicle and a loaded dump truck collided. He said the two were wearing seat belts.

Yonkin was traveling south toward the borough when for an unknown reason his car crossed the centerline and entered the nouthbound lane, colliding with the dump truck.

Bowen said the truck driver saw the car coming at him and did everything possible to avoid the collision, but there was nothing he could do.

“He applied his brakes. There were were skid marks,” Bowen said. “The impact pushed Yonkin’s car back into the southbound lane,” he said.

“It was an awful accident,” he added.

Yonkin’s brother, John, is the current Dushore fire chief.

The state police at the Towanda barracks were leading the investigation into the crash.

The two bodies were taken to Guthrie Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, New York, where autopsies performed Wednesday morning confirmed that the couple died of blunt force trauma injuries, Bowen said.