‘It’s just unforgettable’: Pollard’s family says pain still lingers a year after deadly crash

One year after Carver High School baseball coach David Pollard was struck by a stolen car and killed on Buena Vista Road, family members said the moment is unforgettable and pain from the loss still lingers.

“It just changed our life so much,” said Sandra Render of Columbus. “I was just thinking that day, that one day, just changed our lives forever. It will forever be etched in time. It’s just unforgettable.”

As parents of the beloved coach, Sandra and Terry Render have kept his memory alive with a birthday celebration in Carver Park last month and making sure his 10-year-old daughter, Joy, still went to the father-daughter dance.

Pollard, 36, died just before 2 p.m. on April 18, 2016, after a stolen Audi went through a red light and struck the coach’s silver 2005 Chevrolet sedan at the intersection of Buena Vista and Andrew roads. Pollard’s car then struck a third vehicle.

As that time of day approaches, the family plans to find a quiet place with no phones and noise to share memories of their son.

“It’s going to be a hard day,” Terry said.

The father knows that he can still look at his son’s last text messages, listen to his last voicemail and look at the last pictures Pollard took with the family.

“It brings all that back into play,” he said. “ He was a little boy and he grew into a great man. All those times in between and those occurrences, graduating high school, graduating college, just the joy that he brought to our lives and the lives of other people.”

Soon after the crash, the family tried to avoid the area but found it was too costly to maneuver around the busy intersection.

“Even driving through that accident place every day is a reminder. I feel like I can’t avoid it because I couldn’t,” Sandra said. “ The same day that it happened we were just going that same route, so it’s something I just can’t avoid. I have to accept everything that happened and try to work my way through it.”

While Pollard was known for teaching young men to become leaders, Terry said his son would have influenced or changed the lives of many more over the last year. Pollard would help families with groceries or even pay their electric bill.

“That’s what was taken away from us, but also the community and I just look back,” Terry said. “David was going to do so much between 2016 and 2017, and in my mind I imagine great things he could have and would have accomplished.”

Pollard was able to take his daughter to the father-daughter dance last year but Terry said he didn’t mind standing in for his son this year.

“I truly loved taking Joy to the father-daughter dance,” he said. “You can’t substitute grandfather for father and expect the same result. It was bittersweet. I could take her but it hurts me so much David wasn’t there to take her.”

In looking at their year-old picture at the dance, Sandra noted how beautiful it was to see how much Joy loved him and how much he loved her.

At Carver where Pollard made an impact on the young men on and off the baseball field, coach Andy Hicks said it’s been a rough transition. Hicks served as an assistant under Pollard but moved into the head coaching position after the crash.

“We are trying to keep going with what David would have wanted done here, instill values in kids,” Hicks said after a practice last week. “He had to turn baseball into lifelong lessons, to never give up. We play seven innings and never give up. I have gotten compliments from that.”

Hicks said the players know whose field they are stepping onto at Carver. The team doesn’t have a game on the schedule for Tuesday, but Hicks said Pollard would want them to be preparing for the region tournament.

“They hustle,” the coach said. “I think with the last year gone, they play as a team. It’s going to be a tough day. It’s going to be a day we come out here and keep doing what we are doing. That is what David would want.”

A wrongful death claim against the Columbus Consolidated Government and some Columbus police officers seeks up to $9 million in State Court. Filed on Aug. 29, 2016, by attorneys Katonga Wright and Joseph Wiley Jr. of Columbus for the Pollard family, the claim contends that Pollard died after a police pursuit was initiated for a suspect in a stolen car.

Wright wasn’t available for comment last week. Jim Clark, an attorney for Page, Scrantom, Sprouse, Tucker and Ford in Columbus, is defending the city and police. He said Pollard was killed by the criminal action of the suspect in the stolen car.

“We are kind of in the early stages of discovery,” he said Friday.

To keep Pollard’s memory alive and to support causes that he supported, Terry said the family recently learned that the David Pollard Foundation is officially a nonprofit organization. An account is set up at Wells Fargo Bank under the David Pollard Foundation.

The foundation will focus on empowering the community to mentor those at-risk. It also will provide help with academics and scholarship opportunities.

“It is paying it forward for at-risk kids in a more positive environment,” Terry said.

The idea for a foundation came from Pollard’s older brother, Carlos Pollard. “We truly believe in education,” Terry said.

Anyone who wants to donate to the foundation or learn more about it should contact Terry Render at terryrender@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 9:26 AM with the headline "‘It’s just unforgettable’: Pollard’s family says pain still lingers a year after deadly crash."