The most recent Pittsburgh athlete to pass away while competing was Dwayne Haskins.
After being hit on a Florida highway, Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins passes away.
Dwayne Haskins, the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, passed away early on Saturday morning after being hit by a car while crossing a Florida highway as a pedestrian. Haskins: EMAIL MAGAZINE
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Dwayne Haskins, 24, passed away on Saturday at the age of 24 after being hit by a car in Florida while he was attempting to restart his once-promising NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
When he passed away, the former first-round draft pick had just finished his first season with the Steelers and was set to challenge for the starting quarterback position this year.
Haskins lamentably adds his name to the roster of Pittsburgh sportsmen whose lives were taken too soon while they were still competing.
The most well-known is Roberto Clemente, the Pirates Hall of Fame outfielder who passed away in an aircraft crash on December 31, 1972, while participating in a charitable trip. Shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico, a plane carrying relief supplies to Nicaragua crashed, killing Clemente on board.
When Clemente passed away, he was 38 years old and nearing the end of a 3,000-hit career.
After a strong rookie season, Penguins forward Michele Briere passed away in 1971 at the age of just 21 due to injuries sustained in an automobile accident.
Briere’s 44 points in the 1969–70 season put him third on the Penguins. He went back to his home province of Quebec to tie the knot after leading the Penguins in scoring during the playoffs. May 15, while riding with two friends, Briere was ejected from the vehicle and involved in a single-car collision.
Briere underwent four brain surgeries from doctors, and before he passed away, he was unconscious for eleven months. The Penguins have retired only two numbers, his being number 21.
Bob Moose, a native of Export, was a Pirates relief pitcher who was killed in a vehicle accident. Moose passed away on October 9, 1976, his 29th birthday, as a result of injuries he sustained in a two-car collision near Martins Ferry, Ohio.
In 1969, Moose pitched a no-hitter for the Pirates. In the fifth game of the 1972 National League Championship Series, Moose uncorked the wild pitch that allowed George Foster to score the game-winning run for the Cincinnati Reds.
When former Pirates infielder Jose Castillo passed away in a car accident in his home Venezuela in 2019, he was still playing in organized baseball. When Castillo, 37, was driving home from a winter league game, highway robbers ambushed his vehicle. Castillo and another man were killed as the car’s driver attempted to escape the robbers but collided with a rock.
Castillo played for the Pirates for four of his five MLB seasons after being awarded the starting second base job as a rookie in 2004.
Linebacker Marquis Cooper, 26, was most likely killed in 2009 during an incident with a boat off the shore of Clearwater, Florida. Cooper’s remains were never located. He made five appearances for the Steelers in the 2006–07 season.
Wide receiver Chris Henry attended West Virginia and later played for the AFC North rival Cincinnati Bengals, however he never played for the Steelers.
After falling out of the back of a moving truck driven by his fiancée, Henry, then 26 years old, passed away. Although Henry’s girlfriend was never convicted in the accident, it is said that Henry was involved in a domestic argument at the time of his death.
Mose Kelsch, a native of Pittsburgh, was the first player to play for the Steelers, then known as the Pirates, until his death in a vehicle accident in 1935 at the age of 38. When Kelsch signed with the Pirates in 1933, he was 36 years old and the oldest player in the NFL. Though he was listed as a running back, he was the team’s kicker.
Art Rooney Sr., the founder of the Steelers, carried a pall at Kelsch’s funeral.
In 1977, while in training camp with the Steelers, rookie defensive tackle Randy Frisch, then 23 years old, lost his life in a three-vehicle incident close to Irwin. After a preseason game versus Buffalo, Frisch and the driver of the automobile, teammate David Grinaker, were returning to Saint Vincent in Unity. Frisch was Missouri’s most notable athlete.
Two-time All-Pro defensive tackle Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscombe passed away in 1963 from a heroin overdose at the age of thirty-one. During his ten-year NFL career, Lipscombe played with the Steelers for the last two of those years.
