He has never done drugs and always tried to steer teens away from them. He made a huge impact on many children in our community and that showed at his funeral. The kids still today talk fondly of their memories with ‘Coach Buddy.’
February 11, 2018, my son had dinner and an energy drink then sat to enjoy his evening with his family. He was holding his 11-month-old daughter on his sofa when all of a sudden, he went stiff and started making a gurgling sound. I was taking my shower at my home to get ready for bed when the call came in. As I turned the water off, I glanced at the phone number I had just missed. It was my son’s fiancée’s number. It shocked me because she rarely calls me so I immediately hit the return call button on my phone. She was panicked, asking, ‘Has Buddy ever had a seizure?’ I said, ‘NO! WHY DO YOU ASK?’ She stated, ‘I think he is having a seizure!’ Then immediately she said, ‘CALL 911 — HE JUST STOPPED BREATHING!’
As I run through my home undressed screaming for his father to get to his home, I was calling 911. As we drove at speeds excess of 130 mph, I was on the phone calling 911 telling them the only thing I knew at that time… ‘MY SON IS NOT BREATHING!’ I then called every neighbor closer to him than I was begging them all to go to him and breathe for him until we got there. During this time his fiancée was doing CPR. We arrived at his home to find him still not breathing so his father did CPR until my daughter and son-in-law arrived and my son-in-law started helping my husband. The two of them continued CPR for what seemed like [an] eternity until the EMS arrived. Paramedics took over and rushed him to the ER. Doctors almost immediately came to the waiting room and took us back to where we found a team of doctors and nurses still doing CPR. They had tubes and IVs everywhere it seemed.
