Michael Sot of Clark died Tuesday from injuries sustained in an automobile accident that took place early Sunday morning.
A sophomore at The College of New Jersey, Sot was 20.
The 2017 Johnson High School graduate was one of five students from the Ewing Township school that were injured in a two-vehicle collision.
Sot was a two-year varsity baseball player for Johnson head coach Dave Kennedy. His senior season he was Kennedy’s second baseman and a pitcher on the team that defeated No. 1-in-the-state and undefeated Governor Livingston on the road in the Union County Tournament quarterfinals.
Sot, who was majoring in mathematics at TCNJ, batted .330 his senior year for the Crusaders, earning Union County Conference-Mountain Division First Team honors. He was also the recipient of the Johnson Athletic Department’s Best Teammate Award in the spring of 2017.
“He was a tremendous athlete, one I enjoyed coaching,” Kennedy said. “He did everything asked of him and was also a leader on and off the field.”
Among Michael’s other three siblings is Jon, a former All-State baseball and football player at St. Joseph’s, Metuchen, who just completed his freshman football season at Harvard University. For his efforts on the gridiron this fall Jon was named All-Ivy League as a punter.
“Michael was doing right long before he got to me,” Kennedy said. “He was part of a lot of what I’ve been trying to do.”
According to the initial accident reports, eight people were hospitalized, six in critical condition, including Sot, following a head-on crash on Pennington Road near the college’s Ewing campus at approximately 2 a.m.
Multiple passengers were in the vehicle Sot was driving and two passengers were in the other vehicle, according to published reports and an account of the accident on a GoFundMe page.
A preliminary police investigation, according to nj.com, “revealed that one vehicle likely crossed the center line and hit the other car head-on.”
According to a GoFundMe page established with permission of Sot’s parents, Sot was “being a responsible designated driver and making sure his friends got home safe” when the vehicle he was driving “was hit head on.”
On Monday news broke that, according to The Trentonian, police on Monday charged David Lamar V, 22, of West Windsor with seven counts of assault by auto after investigators determined he was impaired during the early Sunday morning crash, which injured eight people total.
New Jersey 101.5 reported that Ewing police said Lamar’s 2018 Kia Optima, traveling southbound on Route 31, drifted into the northbound lanes and into the path of Sot’s 2007 Dodge Charger, which was carrying five passengers.
Sot suffered head trauma that required surgery, a punctured lung, fractures of the L4 and L5 vertebrae and many broken bones, according to the GoFundMe page.
Also, CNJ’s student newspaper, The Signal, reported all five of the students injured in the crash, including Sot, were treated for their injuries at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton and at St. Mary’s Hospital in Langhorne, Pa.
Details credited to mycentraljersey.com’s coverage as reported by Greg Tufaro.