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High School Coach Shot Dead by Former Player in Weight Room

Posted Jun 24, 2009 2:53PM By Shane Bacon (RSS feed)

Filed Under: High School

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Editor's Note: This post has been updated.

A disturbing story has come out of Des Moines, Iowa, as a well-known high-school football coach who has seen four of his players reach the NFL was shot dead by a former player in the school's weight room Wednesday morning. Fifty students were apparently in the school when the shooting occurred.

Ed Thomas, the football coach at Aplington-Parkersburg High School who was named NFL High School Coach of the Year in 2005, was shot around 8 AM local time. He was flown to the hospital, where he died shortly thereafter.
A 24-year-old former Aplington-Parkersburg High School student and football player has been arrested in the shooting death of Ed Thomas, the district's long-time football coach. Mark Daryl Becker, who has been charged with first-degree murder, was arrested at a rural Parkersburg residence shortly after the shooting, an official from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said during a press conference this afternoon.
Thomas was an accomplished coach who accumulated almost 300 wins in his career, which included nearly three decades at Aplington-Parkersburg. No students were injured in the shooting, though some witnessed the tragedy.

It appears that Becker, 24, was troubled before the shooting. According to reports, Becker was involved in a high speed chase on Saturday with police that resulted in Becker striking a deer going nearly 90 MPH.
The Saturday chase began after Parkersburg police were alerted by Cedar Falls police about an incident at a residence in which Becker allegedly broke out windows with a baseball bat and drove into the garage door causing more than $1,000 damage.

Becker on Sunday was charged with eluding, speeding, reckless driving and failure to obey a stop sign.

He received a four-day jail term with the remaining 86 days suspended on the assault charge. He also was charged with underage possession of alcohol in August 2004 and pleaded guilty to that charge a month later.
A terrible story gets worse once you read about what Thomas has meant to the community. Parkersburg was ravaged by a tornado this past summer, and the head coach went out of his way to help restore the football field that meant so much to the community. Here is video of Thomas talking about the devastation.
"Why would anyone want to do something like this?" said former Iowa defensive coordinator Bob Elliott, who works in the athletic department at San Diego State. "He's the best. He's the best of the best."

Elliott knew Thomas through recruiting of former Parkersburg stars Casey Wiegmann, Jared DeVries and Aaron Kampman.

"I talked to Ed after the tornado, and he was clearly devastated," Elliott said. "He was walking around the football field, cleaning up debris when I talked to him. He didn't have a cell phone, so the school gave him one because they knew everybody in the country would be trying to get in touch with him.

"That's how well-liked Ed was. That community has turned out a lot of NFL guys, but it was Ed Thomas who was the face of the community."
Thoughts and prayers are with his family and the students involved in this horrible shooting.

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