Pittsburgh man reported missing dies in crash in Mercer Co.

FINDLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A Pittsburgh man who was reported missing by his family Sunday died in a car accident in Findley Township, Mercer County, according to police.

Larry Bennett Jr., 24, of Lawrenceville, died after his vehicle went off Interstate 79 near mile marker 166 and struck several trees before coming to a rest on its side, authorities said.

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Police were called to the scene of the crash Thursday night after a trucker noticed the vehicle off the road.

Bennett was a father to three children.

“We're all going to miss him, going to miss him so much,” Ebony Horne, the mother of Bennett’s children, said.

Bennett’s family said he left Sunday night to take a visiting friend back home to Erie.

"Early Monday morning - around 5 that morning - his mom said, ‘I know my child. Something's wrong,’” Bennett’s stepfather, Brian Coleman, said.

When Bennett never returned home and didn’t answer his cellphone, his family reported him missing to Pittsburgh police and called hospitals all along the route he would have taken to Erie.

"Everybody said, ‘No, haven't heard of him. (He’s) not in our system,’” Coleman said.

Family and friends spent the next several days wondering what happened to Bennett.

"As soon as I found out he was missing, I got this real sharp pain in my stomach and I just knew something bad happened,” Horne said.

Horne said authorities contacted the family Thursday after finding Bennett’s body.

"It's a sense of relief that we finally know where he's at and we can put him at rest, but this is not the answer we wanted. We wanted him to come home. We wanted him to be alive,” Horne said.

Coleman said after visiting the crash scene, he wasn’t surprised that it took someone several days to spot Bennett’s car.

"The family (wants to) thank the man that found him because if he hadn't found him, Lord knows how long he'd be out there,” Horne said.

Police said Bennett wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. The coroner listed his cause of death as blunt force trauma.

WPXI