Army vet, 28, dies moments after finishing half-marathon revealed plan to secret marry girlfriend 2 days before tragedy
An Army veteran who clawed his way out of PTSD and rebuilt a joyful life by the ocean collapsed and died moments after finishing a half-marathon in San Diego — telling his mother only two days before that he secretly planned to marry the woman he loved.Scottie Williams, 28, had crossed the finish line of the Silver Strand Veterans Day Half Marathon on Sunday when he suddenly crumpled near a water station.On-site medics worked frantically to revive him, performing CPR for what a doctor later told his mother was “an hour and a half,” but he never regained a pulse.His mother, Katherine Yglesias-Herrera, 59, speaking through tears from her home in Ridgecrest, Calif., told The Post she still cannot comprehend how her healthy, athletic son, who completed several half-marathons before Sunday’s race, could die in an instant.“Twenty-eight years old…makes no sense,” Yglesias-Herrera said by phone on Friday.Yglesias-Herrera said she was told her son appeared perfectly fine when she spoke to him through FaceTime two days before he crossed the finish line.
His girlfriend, Bree Rivera, had been waiting for him at the race.“She said that he passed the finish line, and she watched him walk over by the water station, and somebody watched him just … collapse … almost immediately after the race,” Yglesias-Herrera recalled.She told The Post that an autopsy has been completed, but the family won’t know the results for months.She said she has no answers — only questions.“I’ve ran every scenario through my head,” Yglesias-Herrera said.“Why? … Such a good asset to this world.
Why?”She described their final FaceTime call two days before his death, saying, “He walked me around, showed me his new apartment, his new garage.”Yglesias-Herrera said he even stepped outside and “showed me all his plants and showed me his bedroom and his bathroom and his gym.”Williams had been working on a memorial for his father, who died in August after succumbing to...