Around 6pm on the evening of Friday, June 8, 23-year-old Machteld Klok was killed when the car she was driving struck a tree on Case Hill Road in Franklin, according to Sergeant Gary Leahy of the New York State Police.
Leahy said that Klok was driving downhill towards Route 28 when she lost control of the vehicle.
"The car lost control and was sideways when it hit a pretty big tree," he said. "The impact was right on the driver's side door."
Klok died at the scene, Leahy said.
Klok, a master's student in process engineering at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, was in the area to complete an internship project at the FrieslandCampina USA production plant on Route 10 in Delhi. She had been in the area just a few months, said FrieslandCampina HR manager Maryalice Butler, and was scheduled to return to the Netherlands and graduate from her program at the end of the summer.
"She was very well liked by her coworkers, she fit in very well with all of our staff," said Butler. "She had a very outgoing, generous personality."
Butler said that the company had brought grief counselors in to the plant to help employees, and that on Monday afternoon, Klok's coworkers held a ceremony near the site of the accident.
John Janiszewski, director of HR for the Delhi plant, said that Klok's death had been a shock to the organization.
"It's quite a tragedy to lose someone so young," he said. "We're doing the best we can to communicate back home."
A memorial notice for Klok, who was a rower, was posted on the website for Argo, the Wageningen rowing club.
