SHAMOKIN -- A cross is nailed to the tree on Schoolhouse Road near Shamokin where Steven Yost, 19, crashed Saturday. The coroner says he was killed instantly.
State police say Yost was just past Irish Valley Road when he lost control of his pickup truck. The teenager's truck ended up down an embankment and in a creek.
"He was a good kid. We worked on his trucks all the time. We hung out a couple of times. I knew his dad real good and all of his buddies. Everybody knows each other around here," Jim Britton said.
A neighbor says Yost was on his way home from work at the time of the crash. That neighbor also says Yost was recently honored as the Shamokin Rotary Club's Student of the Month.
Steven Yost was a 2014 graduate of Line Mountain High School.
Steven attended classes at the Northumberland County Career and Technology Center and he specialized in welding.
"He did everything perfect. He did everything he was expected to do. I don't give 100's out! I had to do it," Mike Bradley said.
Bradley is the welding instructor at the Northumberland County Career and Technology Center. He couldn't say enough good things about Steven Yost, and says his death is hard to talk about.
"One of the greatest kids I've ever had. He was absolutely an exemplary student, self-motivator, self-starter," Bradley said.
Some friends and neighbors were too sad to go on camera, but one friend says he will remember Yost as an avid outdoors man who loved to hunt.
"He went all the time. He shot a real, real big deer this past hunting season," Britton said.
State police are still investigating whether Saturday's rain or speed might have caused Yost to lose control of his truck.
