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Community mourns former high school hockey star killed in Salem crash
Kory Ouellette was reportedly injured when a fence pole came crashing through his windshield.
A 20-year-old man died Sunday evening in a single-car crash in Salem, police said.
The Salem Police Department said officers responded to the serious crash on Puritan Road around 6:18 p.m. Video from the scene captured by WCVB shows an SUV that had apparently struck a fence in front of a home. A large hole is visible in the car’s windshield.
Police said the driver, Salem resident Kory Ouellette, died from his injuries.
A witness, home improvement worker Vinny Valenti, told NBC10 Boston he was working nearby when he heard the crash.
“I ran out and there was a whole 12-foot pole, the top of the fence, it went through the windshield, through his neck and out the back window,” Valenti told the news outlet, a description corroborated by police scanner recordings posted on Broadcastify.
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He said he tried calling Ouellette’s family but couldn’t unlock the driver’s cell phone, so he sat in the passenger seat and held Ouellette’s hand until an ambulance arrived, according to NBC10.
“I just told him, ‘Keep breathing, keep breathing. Gotta breathe, kid. Gotta breathe, kid,’” Valenti told NBC10.
The crash is under investigation by the Salem Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division and the Massachusetts State Police Accident Reconstruction Team.
Former high school hockey star remembered for ‘huge heart’
A 2021 graduate of St. Mary’s in Lynn, Ouellette’s Instagram page is dominated by photos from his days playing ice hockey on the Catholic school’s team.
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He joined the squad in the eighth grade and was a member of the 2016-2017 team that won a Division 1 state title, coach Mark Lee said.
“He was a defenseman who had a lot of offensive ability,” Lee said in a phone interview. “And believe it or not, throughout the years of his career, he scored some very, very big goals for his team and the program. He was kind of a clutch player.”
Lee described Ouellette as a “great kid” with a “huge heart.”
“He cared about his teammates and everybody,” Lee said. “He was one of those kids who had a lot of energy — when Kory was in the room, you knew he was there.”
Among his teammates was older brother Kyle Ouellette, who told The Daily Item in 2018 that he considered Kory his defensive partner on the ice.
“I have a picture framed in our house of us together at the (TD) Garden (after winning the state championship),” Kyle Ouellette told the local newspaper at the time. “It’s something that I’ll have with me and I’ll cherish forever.”
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Lee said Sunday’s crash came as a shock to everybody.
“It’s as tragic as it gets,” he said. “Obviously the St. Mary’s hockey family is grieving and just cares so much about the family and what they’re probably going through.”
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