Baseball-loving boy, 8, dies at ballpark

A Montana Vista boy who was a beloved member of the Sahuarita baseball family died in a frightening accident Friday night after coaches and ballplayers frantically tried to rescue him from a large puddle in which he apparently was electrocuted at Reid Park in Tucson.

Deshun Chance Glover, 8, who had completed second grade at Continental School, was in the crowd at an American Legion tournament where the Sahuarita team had started to play a game that was halted by rain and lightning.

Deshun was widely known to Sahuarita baseball players of all ages because his stepbrother, Shawn, plays on the Sahuarita High School varsity team and because Deshun loved baseball and attended all the games, relatives and varsity baseball coach Sam Gelardi said.

In fact, the varsity coaches often asked Deshun to sweep out the dugout and do other chores for a bit of pay, and the team teased him and adopted him as a mascot, coach Mike Moreno said.

“He was very special. He was our little angel,” Moreno said.

When the Friday night game was stopped, Deshun was standing barefoot in a large puddle near an electrical pole when others called to him to come to the dugout, then noticed that he was not moving.

Deshun soon fell down and was lying on his back, “shaking like a leaf,” Gelardi said. Many coaches, umpires and players tried to pull him from the puddle, but were knocked back by powerful electrical shocks.

“I tried to reach down to get his ankles and a charge went through my body. It was unbelievable, like getting hit in chest by a running back. It knocked me back, and my hat flew off,” Gelardi said.

One of the ballplayers called 9-1-1 on a cell phone and spoke to a dispatcher, who said the water was probably still conducting an electrical charge and warned others to stay out of the water and to try to get Deshun out of it.

At one point, a wooden bat was placed across the boy’s chest and pressed down as a form of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. After many attempts to move Deshun, his stepfather, Chuck Glover, who had been loading baseball equipment into his truck, ran over to the puddle and somehow pulled his son out of the water.

“We couldn’t move him. His stepfather...came flying around the corner like Superman and grabbed him in one shot, flung him over his back and we found a wooden plank outside the dugout and placed him on it in the dugout” and began CPR efforts, Gelardi said.

Gelardi and a coach from Tucson High School performed CPR until Tucson Fire Department paramedics arrived and took over.

The boy was pronounced dead at University Medical Center between 8 and 9 p.m., a hospital spokeswoman said.

“No way he was he hit by lightning — it was something where he was standing. That’s what I told TPD (Tucson Police Department) detectives. It’s a freak accident, we could have lost a lot more. Once it started to rain, a short must have occurred underground and he happened to be standing in the wrong place,” Gelardi said.

Gelardi and the Glover family have had a lot of drama on-field this summer. The coach performed CPR on a Rio Rico baseball player on the field in June and is credited with saving the player’s life after an outfield collision. In that incident, Gelardi was assisted by Deshun’s older adopted brother, Charlie Glover, who is a CPR instructor and firefighter and was there to watch Shawn play.

Deshun was adopted at age 4 by his aunt and uncle, Mary and Chuck Glover, along with his half-brothers Tyrell and Daniel. The boys at times called their adoptive parents Aunt Mary and Uncle Chuck and other times Mom and Dad, Donna Glover said. In addition to Shawn and Charlie, he also has an adopted sister, Valerie. Other siblings include two brothers, Steve Glover and Joseph, and a sister, Aaliyah Nowlin.

Services have not been set, but the family will explore holding a memorial at the Anamax Park baseball field because, Donna Glover said, “that was the place where he was the happiest.”

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738