Officers Smelled Something In The Car That Killed Two College Cyclists

Two Milligan University sophomores headed out for a training ride and never came home.

A Tennessee driver plowed into their cycling team without ever hitting the brakes.

Investigators found something else in his car that raises even more troubling questions.

What the Investigators Found at the Scene

Haylan Engdahl and Brayden Rogers were sophomores at Milligan University – a small Christian liberal arts school tucked into the Appalachian foothills of northeastern Tennessee.

They were part of a national championship cycling program.

The Milligan men's team had just won the team time trial at USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in May.

Eleven riders headed out on Highway 19E in Carter County on the morning of August 19th.

John Benfield, 69, of Newland, North Carolina, was driving a 2003 Subaru behind another vehicle when the car ahead of him moved into the inside lane.

That move exposed the cyclists directly in his path.

Benfield told investigators he never saw them until it was too late.

Investigators examined the crash site and came up empty.

Nothing at the scene suggested Benfield ever braked or swerved before plowing into the team.

Engdahl and Rogers were pronounced dead at the scene.

Four of their teammates wound up in the surgical intensive care unit.

Nine out of eleven riders were killed or hurt.

And officers on scene detected the odor of marijuana coming from Benfield's car before the investigation even began.

The Detail Mainstream Outlets Buried

The affidavit does not confirm impairment, and no DUI charge has been filed – that part of the investigation continues.

But a driver who never braked, never swerved, and never even saw eleven cyclists in broad daylight had marijuana odor coming off his car at a scene where two teenagers lay dead.

You don't need a lab report to know something was badly wrong behind that wheel.

Carter County prosecutors clearly saw it too.

They asked the judge to double Benfield's initial bond from $150,000 to $300,000, and Judge Keith Bowers granted it.

Bowers also barred Benfield from driving and ordered regular drug and alcohol testing as conditions of release.

That's a prosecutor and a judge doing their jobs.

Now compare that to how these cases get handled in the blue cities and states that have spent a decade normalizing marijuana use while gutting consequences for reckless and impaired driving.

Democrat-run jurisdictions across this country have decriminalized, defelonized, and diverted their way into a culture where getting behind the wheel high barely registers as a crime until somebody's children end up dead on the pavement.

Carter County, Tennessee treated this like the potential public-safety catastrophe it was.

Too many blue-city prosecutors would have called it a Tuesday.

This Is Not an Isolated Incident

Haylan Engdahl was 19 years old, from Winthrop Harbor, Illinois.

Those who knew him remembered an upbeat, deeply faithful young man that everyone at his high school gravitated toward.

Engdahl had already survived a broken femur in a training crash back in March.

He posted about it from the hospital – upbeat, determined, grateful.

He came back and kept riding.

Brayden Rogers was from Huntsville, Alabama.

His mountain biking community is still too devastated to speak publicly.

What makes this tragedy even harder to accept is the pattern sitting underneath it.

Wednesday's crash marked the third road-training death connected to Milligan University in a four-year span – at a school of just over 1,200 students.

Preventable cycling deaths in America hit 1,392 in 2024, a 37 percent increase over the past decade, according to the National Safety Council.

That surge has tracked the decade-long march toward marijuana legalization pushed by progressive politicians who never have to answer for the bodies that follow.

Haylan Engdahl came back from a broken femur because he loved cycling that much.

He deserved a driver who wasn't a threat before he ever turned the key.

So did Brayden Rogers.

So did every one of those nine riders who should have finished a Tuesday morning ride and gone to class.

Sources:

• Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, "Driver accused of killing 2 college cyclists in Tennessee crash allegedly failed to brake: court docs," Fox News, August 20, 2026.
• Staff, "Affidavit details moments before deadly Milligan cycling team crash," WCYB News 5, August 20, 2026.
• Staff, "Bond increased for suspect in crash that killed 2 Milligan students," WJHL, August 20, 2026.
• Staff, "Milligan University Freshmen Killed on US 19E; Third Road-Training Death in Four Years," TechTimes, August 19, 2026.
• Staff, "2 college cyclists killed and 7 injured in Tennessee car crash," CNN, August 19, 2026.
• National Safety Council, "Bicycle Deaths – Injury Facts," April 2026.