Five people — two on a motorcycle, two in passenger vehicles and another on foot — were killed in numerous traffic incidents in a barely 36-hour period over the weekend, authorities said.

The deadly series of crashes began Friday night when Kenneth E. Austin, 43, was run over while walking on a dark country road in Fish Lake Township in east-central Minnesota. Austin was heading to retrieve his car from a bar less than a mile from where he'd been staying in Chisago County, police said. He was hit on Stark Road while stumbling down the centerline, said Sgt. Kyle Puelston of the Chisago County Sheriff's Office.

"It was clear that [the driver] was not impaired. … It was obvious it was unavoidable on her part," Puelston said.

Text messages show that Austin had asked a friend for a ride to a neighborhood bar to retrieve his vehicle, but the friend was unable to take him. Austin decided to walk there himself.

Near Mankato on Saturday afternoon, a motorcyclist and his passenger, both of Mankato, died in a broadside crash. The crash happened at Hwy. 68 and 519th Avenue, according to the State Patrol.

A Cadillac heading south on 519th Avenue collided with a 2005 Suzuki Road-Start motorcycle heading east on Hwy. 68. The driver, Nicholas B. Bissette, 37, and passenger Corinne M. Claridge-Bollman, 38, were killed. Neither was wearing a helmet, the patrol said. Driver Sara Dauer, 30, of Judson, Minn., and the two children inside the car were not injured.

In the same part of the state, a teenage driver ran off a southern Minnesota highway late at night in a crash that killed her passenger. The wreck occurred about 11:25 p.m. Saturday on Hwy. 14 near Janesville, according to the State Patrol.

Killed was a 19-year-old Helayna L. Nguyen, of Austin, Minn., the patrol said. She was not wearing a seat belt, the patrol added.

The driver, a 17-year-old girl from Austin, was seriously hurt and hospitalized in Rochester, the patrol said. The driver did have on her seat belt.

In Pine County, a 46-year-old man from Ham Lake died when his pickup truck crashed into a tree about 11:30 a.m. Sunday along Hwy. 23. The driver's name was expected to be released on Monday.

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