SOUTH HADLEY — Vermont State Police have identified a 20-year-old from South Hadley as the victim of a deadly crash on I-89 on Saturday afternoon.
Louis Blair was driving a 2005 Honda Element south shortly after 5 p.m. in the town of Hartford when his vehicle “left the roadway into the tree line at a high rate of speed,” state police said.
Blair, who police said was the only occupant and was wearing a seat belt, was found dead inside of the vehicle.
Blair was “in the Burlington area working for his family’s small business. He was on his way home to Massachusetts when he crashed,” Vermont State Trooper Stacia Geno wrote in an email to the Valley News in New Hampshire.
A 2018 article in the Gazette noted that Blair was a wide receiver on the South Hadley High School football team.
Coach Scott Taylor expressed sadness Tuesday on hearing the news.
“It brings to light how precious life is,” he said. “It’s the memories that we create with these kids. You think about them when you see that they get married or they had a child or they had a promotion or they graduate.
“When you see something like this it brings back the memories and you know, that’s it. That’s all you have from that point on.”
Anyone with information about the crash was asked to call Geno, who works out of the Royalton barracks, at 802-234-9933.