BARLOW, Ohio — Routine maintenance on a tractor became deadly March 17 as a tractor part fractured and struck a man, officials said.

Adam D. Biehl, 31, of 1585 Stanleyville Road, died that afternoon from injuries received when a large piece of tractor equipment he had been repairing blew apart and pieces hit him, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.

Biehl, who had been employed at his family’s Biehl’s Dairy Farm, and two other individuals had been working on the tractor at a farm on 1385 Fisher Ridge Road in Barlow Township around 3 p.m., when the tractor part fractured and he sustained the serious injuries.

Mincks said Biehl and the others had replaced a bad fuel injector pump on the tractor and were revving the engine to test the pump. At that time a cast iron clutch housing that had been installed about a month ago broke to pieces. While accelerating the engine, the clutch housing blew apart and sent large pieces of metal in every direction, Mincks said.

“One piece of metal shot up through the roof of the garage that housed the tractor and other large pieces of metal were blown 30 or 40 feet away from the machinery and where the men had been,” Mincks said. “Several pieces of the metal also struck the victim, which caused his injuries.”

The two others with Biehl were not injured.

He was rushed to the Marietta Memorial Hospital emergency room by the Barlow Volunteer Fire Department’s rescue squad, but died around 5 p.m. as a result of his wounds.

Within minutes of his death social networking sites filled with prayer requests for his family, including his wife, Amy, and daughters Alayna and Alyssa. Biehl was a 1999 graduate of Marietta High School and the news quickly spread, including to Minck’s son, Shawn, who graduated with the victim.

“I hadn’t even thought about Adam having gone to school with Shawn until the Facebook messages started,” the sheriff said. “These tragedies somehow seem more so when social media gets involved because the impact is more noticeable.”

Along with being involved with his family farm, Biehl was a 2001 graduate of The Ohio State Agricultural Technical Institute. He also owned and operated his own business, Tractor Pulling Parts (TPP).

In his downtime he was a member of the National Tractor Pulling Assoc., active in pulling and a well-known member of that community. Less than a week following his death, a Facebook tribute to him on Mule Deere Pulling Team, his tractor pulling page, received more than 100,000 “likes.”

Within hours of his accident, friends had designed and created a memorial sticker for their tractors during pull events. “It just seemed right to have something of him there,” said friend Dusty Boley.

Biehl was active in the Marietta FFA Alumni and a member of the Black & White Holstein Club, 4-H, Washington County Farm Bureau, the Washington County Farm Agribusiness Program and the County Corn Club.