A highly-regarded US baptist professor has been killed alongside his wife after their car was struck by an alleged drag racer in Fort Worth, Texas. Ben Arbour and his wife Meg were involved in the collision as they drove back from a date together in the early hours of Friday morning. The pair, both aged 39, leave behind four children aged 10 to 16.
Police said that the Arbours were hit by one of the street racers as they pulled out of a junction onto the 4700 block of West Risinger Road - an area well-known for street racing. After colliding with the Arbour's vehicle, the racing car flipped and hit a wall, killing the driver, while a second car fled the scene and has not yet been located. All three people involved in the crash were pronounced dead at the scene.
Ben Arbour spent time in the UK, receiving his doctorate from the University of Bristol. He was also a two-time graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), where he taught as an adjunct professor.
The president of SBTS, Adam W. Greenway, urged prayer for the Arbour family:
Dan Rishmawy, campus minister at the University of California, called Arbour "an excellent analytic theologian and just good man."
He added: "They had four kids. Please pray for them. Lord have mercy, this is so awful."
The couple were heavily involved in their local church, Wedgwood Baptist Church in Forth Worth.
“They were just passionate about relationships,” senior pastor Dale Braswell told WFAA-TV. “This was a family that understood the importance of opening up your lives to other people.”
Arbour's longtime friend and fellow professor, John Gilhooly, told Religion News Service that Ben was a "wonderful, relentless, indefatigable advocate for clarity in our speech about God, purity in our devotion to Christ, and charity in our conduct by the Spirit."
A GoFundMe has been set up to help raise money for the Arbour's children. At the time of writing, just under $55,000 has been raised, with a target of $75,000.
Police said that the crash which claimed the life of the couple was one of four in Fort Worth area that night. In total, seven people were killed as a result of the collisions.