An Army veteran who overcame PTSD and rebuilt a joyful life by the ocean collapsed and died just moments after finishing a half-marathon in San Diego — revealing to his mother only two days earlier that he had secretly planned to marry the woman he loved.
Scottie Williams, 28, had just crossed the finish line of the Silver Strand Veterans Day Half Marathon on Sunday when he suddenly fell near a water station.
Medics on site worked frantically to revive him, performing CPR for what a doctor later told his mother lasted “an hour and a half,” but he never regained a pulse.
Scottie Williams, 28, had just crossed the finish line of the Silver Strand Veterans Day Half Marathon on Sunday when he suddenly collapsed near a water station.
His mother, Katherine Yglesias-Herrera, 59, speaking through tears from her home in Ridgecrest, Calif., told The Post she still cannot understand how her healthy, athletic son — who had completed several half-marathons before — could die so suddenly.
“Twenty-eight years old… it makes no sense,” Yglesias-Herrera said Friday.
She said she last spoke to Scottie via FaceTime two days before the race and was told he seemed perfectly fine. His girlfriend, Bree Rivera, had been waiting for him at the finish line.
“She said he passed the finish line and walked over to the water station, and then somebody saw him just… collapse… almost immediately after the race,” Yglesias-Herrera recalled.
Katherine Yglesias-Herrera, Scottie’s mother, told The Post that he appeared perfectly healthy during their FaceTime call just two days before the race.
She said an autopsy has been completed, but the family won’t know the results for months, leaving her with no answers — only questions.
“I’ve run every scenario through my head,” Yglesias-Herrera said.
“Why? … Such a good asset to this world. Why?”
She recalled their final call, when Scottie gave her a virtual tour of his new apartment. “He walked me around, showed me his new apartment, his new garage,” she said. He even stepped outside to “show me all his plants, his bedroom, his bathroom, and his gym.”
Williams had also been working on a memorial for his father, who died in August from cirrhosis of the liver. “His dad passed away in August, and he was building his dad’s urn in his garage,” she said, breaking down in tears as she remembered their last conversation.
“God just must have needed him more than I did,” she said, overcome with emotion.
On Thursday, Williams’ body was escorted home to Ridgecrest by police and local veterans, as residents lined the streets waving American flags.
“This town … has been nothing but amazing for him,” his mother said.
