Hall of Fame coach and wife killed as SUV crashes into South Jersey house

🚨A beloved track coach and his wife were killed when their SUV hit a house

🚨The Harris family escaped injury as they were eating dinner at the time

🚨 Thomas Hengel is the second beloved high school coach to pass in one month.

HARRISON TOWNSHIP — An esteemed high school track coach and his wife died when their SUV crashed into a house on Saturday evening.

Harrison Township police said 72-year-old Thomas Hengel and Lisa Hengel, 61, were killed when their Hyundai Palisade SUV accelerated on Banff Drive, crashed into a house and caught fire.

The SUV hopped the curb and crossed two front yards before winding up in the living room of the house around 6:15 p.m. The cause of the acceleration is under investigation.

The residents of the home were not injured but the home was declared uninhabitable. Harrison Township Police Chief Ronald Cundey told NJ.com the family was in the kitchen eating dinner at the time.

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Clearview coach remembered for discipline and dedication

Thomas was a 1972 graduate of Clearview Regional High School, where he served as a track and cross-country coach and teacher. He was inducted into the Gloucester County Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.

"Coach Hengel lived and breathed discipline (and Notre Dame football). He showed up, rain or shine, on the good days and the off days, committed to his teams with a consistency that never wavered. He didn't just teach us how to run; he taught us how to show up for life, no excuses, no shortcuts," former student Andrea Eppehimer wrote on her Facebook page about her former coach. "Coach pressed us right to our breaking point and then a little further because he saw what we were capable of long before we did. He believed in our potential with a certainty that carried us across finish lines we never thought we could reach."

Friends told CBS Philadelphia that Lisa Hengel was a landscape designer.

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GoFundMe launched for family whose home was destroyed

The residents whose home was damaged were identified in a verified GoFundMe campaign.

"As we all know, insurance can take some time to come through and they are in desperate need now for basic essentials," the campaign organizer wrote.

Another loss for the athletic community

Thomas Hengel is the second much-loved South Jersey coach to die in the past month. Steve Ianotti, the 72-year-old former head football coach at Kingsway Regional High School, went missing on Dec. 26. His black Jeep Wrangler was found in a remote field in Lawrence Township in Cumberland County. Logan Township police confirmed his death but did not disclose the circumstances.

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