Kassandra Kaulius lived for softball and her family, her sister Miranda recalls.
Kaulius, 22, was driving home from a softball game at Cloverdale Athletic Park Tuesday night when her red BMW was t-boned by what is believed to be a drunk driver.
Kaulius was killed instantly.
It was just after 10 p.m. when Kaulius was navigating a turn onto 152 Street from 64 Avenue. At that moment, a 34-year-old woman from Surrey driving a Ford Econoline van ran a red light heading northbound on 152 Street, smashing into Kaulius’s car.
Witnesses told police they saw the driver run into a wooded area.
Police located the woman “showing signs of intoxication from alcohol,” said RCMP Cpl. Drew Grainger.
Police are considering charges of impaired driving causing death.
Rob Upton, a director with the Surrey Storm, was with Kassandra just before she left Cloverdale Athletic Park Tuesday.
“It happened just after she left to go home,” Upton said.
Kaulius was a gifted pitcher, who brought the Surrey Storm to the nationals in 2008.
“We’re absolutely devastated, our whole team is,” he said.
Some of her favourite moments, he said, were working with the youth.
“She loved coaching the younger kids,” he said. “She was always smiling, she was just a great person.”
She was slated to bring a team of young players to a series of games in the United States this coming weekend, he said.
Miranda said it was a senseless death of a magnificent person.
“She was amazing, wonderful, outgoing, energetic, sense of humour,” Miranda said Tuesday. “Oh man, just take a dictionary and ask for the best words and that would be my sister.”
Kaulius was attending the University of the Fraser Valley to become a physical education teacher. The rest of her time was booked solid.
“She coached and played (baseball), she had two jobs, she was going to school,” Miranda said. “Her passion was baseball and family, those were her biggest loves.”
Grainger called it “another senseless example of a seeming impaired accident causing death.”
