College Baseball Player Angel Mercado-Ocasio Dead at 19 After Accident

A Pennsylvania community is mourning the loss of a college baseball player.

Angel Mercado-Ocasio died May 23 at age 19, succumbing to a traumatic head injury he sustained a day earlier. A makeshift wooden dugout he helped build at a ball field used by his recreation baseball league in his native Harrisburg, Penn. collapsed on top of him, Fox 43 reported.

At the time of the accident, Angel, his coach and a few other teammates were taking down the structure, which they put up themselves before a game, the outlet said, adding that the city had recently told them they didn’t have a permit to build on the property.

“Angel had the biggest heart,” Alejandro Escudero, one of the late player’s close friends, told Fox 43. “He was an innocent kid, I just wonder why it had to be him.”

Mercado-Ocasio was a second baseman for his recreation team, and also played baseball at Central Penn College.