A Summerton basketball coach died Thursday night in a wreck in Sumter County.
Sumter County Coroner Harvin Bullock said Ruth Coard, 41 died when her 2008 Chevrolet pickup truck hit a tree in the westbound lane of U.S. 378 on the east side of Sumter County about 8:10 p.m. Bullock said she died from blunt-force trauma to the chest.
According to the state Highway Patrol, Coard’s truck hit a horse in the road before she lost control of the vehicle and hit the tree. She was not wearing a seatbelt. Bullock said her 8-year-old child was also in the truck, but was treated and released.
Clarendon County School District 1 Superintendent Rose Wilder said that Coard was the district’s director of transportation and was the girls basketball coach at Scott’s Branch High School. Wilder said Coard was driving from the school’s basketball game at East Clarendon High School in Turbeville to Morris College in Sumter to see her son play in a collegiate game. She had been with the district for at least 8 years.
Wilder said the 8-year-old is a student in the district and is doing fine, aside from some bruises.
She said that the district’s counselors and administrators are all at Scott’s Branch consoling students and colleagues close with Coard.
“Ms. Coard was a pillar in the community and at this school,” Wilder said. “She will be greatly missed.”
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―R. Darren Price
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