A MAN who died yesterday following a collision involving two off-road motorcycles near a park-and-ride facility off the M1 motorway has been named.
Ryan Phillips (27) from the Lisburn area died shortly before 7pm after the crash in a laneway near the park-and-ride at Sprucefield.
Another man was taken to hospital with injuries that were not thought to be life-threatening.
Police urged anyone with information about the fatal crash to contact officers in Lisburn on the PSNI non-emergency number 101.
The death comes amid increased safety concerns over the past year about off-road vehicles such as scramblers.
In July last year mother-of-three Valerie Armstrong (35), from Poleglass on the outskirts of west Belfast, died after being struck by a scrambler while walking her dog in Colin Glen Forest Park.
Mrs Armstrong, originally from Co Westmeath, worked in Cafe Vaudeville on Arthur Street in central Belfast.
In October a nine-year-old boy was taken to hospital after being struck by a scrambler on a football pitch in Newtownabbey, Co Antrim.
The crash at Mossley Pavilion, Carnmoney Road, happened hours after Stormont politicians debated legislative changes around the use of scramblers and quad bikes.
Sunday night’s crash comes just months after Translink decided to shut its Sprucefield park-and-ride facility on weekend evenings because of “antisocial behaviour”. The move followed “incidents of antisocial behaviour including littering and trespass”, Translink said at the time.
