Family and friends say goodbye to Emerson student who suffered brain damage

Daniel Hollis’ devastated family and friends were saying their goodbyes Tuesday to the Emerson College sophomore who suffered severe brain damage in a late-night fight in Allston Saturday — injuries his family says he was not expected to survive.

“We are focusing on spending what time we have left with Dan at this time,” his sister Kate wrote in a message to the Herald Tuesday.

Hollis’ family says he was out with friends in Allston early Saturday morning when they found themselves in a fight with another group of college-aged boys. The family says the Emerson sophomore was hit, and then struck his head on the pavement when he fell.

“We ask that you focus on the positive: his infectious smile, his goofy sense of humor, his love for music, hockey, lacrosse and most importantly his love for his friends and family,” the family wrote in a CaringBridge.com post. “The positive energy is making it to him and surrounding him with love while he is still with us.”

Hollis’ old high school teammates gathered at their coach’s Hopedale home Tuesday night, reflecting on Hollis’ smile, happiness and goofiness.

Coach Eric Moxim said the tall and lanky Hollis is an “ice cream sundae turned into a human.”

Moxim remembered Hollis apologizing for smiling so much. The players were taking team pictures one year, and they were all showing their “mean face,” except for Hollis.

“‘Sorry coach, I just like to smile,’ ” Hollis told the coach. “That’s going to be the thing that personifies who he was as we all move forward in life without him.

“He was my favorite human,” Moxim added. “A pile of kittens. He was just a perfect, perfect young man, and you don’t get a lot of them. The world is kind of a messed-up place, so you can use all of the Dan Hollis’ that you can get.”

Police said officers were called to Parkvale Avenue in Allston at 1:30 a.m. Saturday for a report of an assault, and that a person was rushed to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. No arrests have been made in what police said is an active investigation.

Doctors diagnosed Hollis with a blood clot on his brain, his family wrote.

In an update posted Monday, family members wrote that Hollis’ most recent scans showed irreparable damage to his brain stem and that he will never regain consciousness.

Isabel Indresano, a junior at Emerson College, where Hollis was studying marketing and communications, told the Herald she didn’t think much of Hollis’ empty chair on Monday in the marketing class they shared, but when she found out why on Tuesday, she was “heartbroken” to learn he would never be coming back.

“It’s really scary,” Indresano said. “We are realizing how fragile life is and how this could happen to anyone.”

Ethan Warren, 17, was a freshman at Hopedale High when Hollis was a senior. Hollis became a “big brother” to Warren, he said. As the team’s goalie, Hollis kept the team in most games, Warren said.

“When you put him in net, it was covering it up with a brick wall,” Warren said. “And he always there to bring you up. If you were having a rough game, he was going to tell you there were three more quarters to turn it around. He was always lifting you up.”

Moxim, the coach, said he’d envisioned visiting Hollis at the hospital Wednesday and seeing him sitting up with his “Forrest Gump wave.” There would be a pile of empty pudding cups next to his hospital bed.

“We were going to tease him for the scar on his head,” Moxim said. “And he loved his hair.”

Then, Moxim said, he received a call from Hollis’ mother, telling him, “He’s not coming out of this. He’s not coming home.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2p2LPjQ