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KANAB -- Family members, emergency responders, friends and a small community are all hoping to get some answers soon in the death of a 15-year-old boy. He collapsed on a field in Orderville Wednesday evening after being struck in the side by a baseball.
To Kane County Sheriff Lamar Smith and many others, Jeff Wood's sudden death is perplexing. "Most kids would just jump right back up," Smith said. "And they might complain, it might knock the breath out of them for a few minutes, but it was just really unusual that he would stop breathing like this."
Smith says they're awaiting a medical examiner's report and wondering if the baseball strike may have aggravated some kind of pre-existing condition.
Smith says the whole community is feeling the loss, from family and friends to the people who tried to save his life.
Wood had been practicing with the high school baseball team, when a fly ball went past an infielder and hit Wood on his left side. Smith says emergency medical technicians were on scene only minutes after it happened, but neither they nor doctors at the hospital in Kanab, which is 22 miles away, could revive him.
E-mail: mgiauque@ksl.com
