The Georgia high school baseball community suffered a major blow on Monday when Carver baseball coach David Pollard was involved in a three-vehicle wreck that was initially started by a stolen car.

As reported by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Pollard died of blunt-force trauma after his Chevrolet was struck by a stolen Audi, driving the Chevy into a larger black truck. A witness at the scene ran to Pollard’s vehicle but discovered that he couldn’t extricate the coach from the car. He was declared dead shortly thereafter.

“David Pollard was a great man,” LaGrange coach David Smart, whose team was to play Carver on Monday, told the Ledger-Enquirer. “He was going to the hardware store to pick up some chalk to line fields, and he doesn’t come back. He worked at (coaching). He was important to us, and he was important to his kids. He was doing everything in his power to turn that program into something that was really, really good.

“I had a lot of respect for David. He took over a situation that probably wasn’t ideal. But he had his guys playing hard, and they got better every time they went out there. I thought a lot of him as a coach, but especially as a person. He’s a real top-shelf guy.”