GAINESVILLE, Fla — A University of Florida football player was injured recently when he steered his scooter into the trailer of an 18-wheeler.
Gainesville police said that Yousef Mugharbil, 18, was hit and dragged by a semi-truck on the morning of Aug. 30 on University Avenue, receiving only minor injuries.
The semi truck was headed on West University Ave. and attempted to turn right on Northwest 16th St. While driving a scooter, Mugharbil sped up while in an undesignated driving lane and the semi hit him, police said.
A witness, Josue Robateaw, said he saw Mugharbil get dragged about 100 feet, according to a report by Gainesville news station WCJB.
“There was blood everywhere and under the truck too,” Robateaw told WCJB.
Robateaw was working when he said he saw the 18-year-old in between the tires of the semi.
He was able to get the young man out and said with blood everywhere and some getting on his clothes, it’s a moment he’ll never forget.
“Instead of yielding to the semi-truck, the scooter got into a non-navigable lane,” GPD spokesman Graham Glover said. “That’s one of the lanes that was striped off where you shouldn’t have been driving. It caused the scooter to go straight into the truck that was turning right and had the right of way to make that turn.”
Mugharbil, of Murphy, North Carolina, enrolled at Florida over the summer as one of three offensive line signees in the class of 2021. He is not listed on Florida’s unofficial depth chart for this weekend’s game against Florida Atlantic.
Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullins said he was aware of the accident and said that Mugharbil is “OK.”
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