Memorial Bike Ride, Ghost Bike Installation Honor Bethesda Resident

BETHESDA, MD — Hundreds participated in a memorial bicycle ride in Bethesda Monday morning to honor the life of Sarah Langenkamp, a U.S. State Department official who was killed on Aug. 25 while riding her bike home from her children’s elementary school.

The memorial event also included the installation of a ghost bike on River Road across from the Kenwood Station shopping center, where Langenkamp was killed when a truck crashed into her while she was cycling in the bike lane. Ghost bikes are roadside memorials, placed where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured, usually by the driver of a motor vehicle.

“I’m not calling it an accident. It was a crash,” Sarah’s husband, Daniel Lanenkamp, said at the memorial event on Monday.

Langenkamp, 42, served as a U.S. diplomat with the State Department for 17 years. As foreign service officers with the State Department, both Sarah and Daniel Langenkamp had been stationed in several countries around the world, including Haiti, Uganda and most recently Ukraine. Earlier this year, the family was evacuated from Kyiv to Bethesda after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We were evacuated here in order to be safe. It is unconscionable to me that Sarah would have been safer braving air strikes in Kyiv than on the streets of Bethesda,” Langenkamp told the crowd of cyclists, family members, friends and supporters gathered at the memorial site in Bethesda. “No U.S. diplomats have been killed in Ukraine. In fact, no U.S. diplomats have been killed this year anywhere in the world.”

But Langenkamp noted that three U.S. State Department officials have been killed in the D.C. area this year while riding their bikes or walking. Two State Department officials, including Sarah, were killed while riding a bike and another State Department official was hit by a car while walking, he said.

In Montgomery County alone, more than 30 cyclists and pedestrians have been killed in 2022 after getting hit by cars, Langenkamp said.

“How many people have been held accountable for these deaths?” he asked. “We can and we must do better than this. We have to do this if we are going to realize our potential as a country.”

Langenkamp told the crowd that the tragedy of losing his wife — and the mother of his two young boys — will not keep him from cycling in the future. “I am not going to stop riding my bike. What I’ll do instead is band together with you to create a peloton of change,” he said.

The memorial bike ride began at 10:15 a.m. on Monday at the Bethesda Metro Station Kiss & Ride and followed the Capital Crescent Trail to the bike lane on River Road, where Langenkamp was riding her bike when a truck crashed into her.

On the day she was killed, Langenkamp rode on designated bike routes through residential neighborhoods and the Capitol Crescent trail. For a few hundred yards, it took her along River Road, a busy commercial route “where a bike lane competes with cars and industrial traffic for space as the road becomes State Highway 190,” her husband wrote on a GoFundMe fundraising site.

Montgomery County Police said Langenkamp was riding in the bicycle lane on River Road around 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 25 when the driver of a red 2014 Volvo D13 flatbed truck turned right into the parking lot of 5244 River Rd. and struck Langenkamp.

Police are continuing to investigate the fatal crash. Anyone with information about the crash is asked to contact CRU detectives at 240-773-6620.

At Monday's memorial event, Kristy Daphnis of Montgomery County Families for Safe Streets said: "We want to raise awareness of the dangers that are here on our Montgomery County streets and on our state highways here in the state of Maryland, so this doesn’t have to happen again."

Peter Gray of Montgomery County Families for Safe Streets and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association said Montgomery County needs "to invest in a protected bike lane" on River Road and other roads across the county.

Langenkamp told the crowd that he is working with the cycling community to organize a larger bike ride this fall that starts in Maryland and travels to the U.S. Capitol and then visits other sites where bicyclists have been killed or injured after getting hit by a car.

Last week, Langenkamp created the GoFundMe campaign in Sarah's honor to help organizations working on bike safety. As of Tuesday morning, the GoFundMe campaign had raised nearly $250,000. To learn about the memorial fund or to donate money, visit the GoFundMe campaign.

Speaking at Monday's event, Sarah's younger brother, Matthew, said her ghost bike on River Road "will be a place that we can feel close to her, talk to her and remember the incredible person that she was."

RELATED: Bicycle Safety Fund Set Up In Honor Of Bethesda Woman Killed In Crash