Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
“Oh, no! This isn’t normal. Something is not right.”
Miles Dooley was on the Ohio State campus, where he’s a freshman majoring in biomedical engineering, when his mom, Lisa Pankratz, a second grade teacher back home in Springfield sent him a text Monday night that read: “Do you have a second to call?”
As he sat in his dorm room Wednesday, Sept., 2, he remembered his reaction:
“I got a pit in my stomach. I knew this was something bad.”
It was.
In the words of Gov. Mike DeWine, this was “a horrible, horrible tragedy.”
Dooley’s friend, Pierre Damas Bel — his fast and fearless teammate and fellow co-captain with the Springfield High soccer team last season; the thriving student who joined him in the National Honor Society; the guy he watched work hard in his classes, care for his two younger siblings during summer practices while his parents worked; hold a 30-hour a week job at Texas Roadhouse while going to school; a student who was a lieutenant in Springfield High’s Marine Corps Junior ROTC program; a young man with the big future who had been headed to Wittenberg University on a scholarship and would play soccer — was dead.
