Former Broncos stunned by loss of ex-teammate, family
Friends remember man killed in Crash As funny, dedicated
Brenden Kotyk is feeling “shellshocked” after he learning of the deaths of his former Humboldt Broncos teammate Troy Gasper and Gasper’s young family in a two-vehicle collision on Friday.
“We had a very special time together and I’m very torn up, especially on a holiday like this. It will always make you think of them now on Canada Day,” he told Postmedia News on Sunday.
Troy, 26, his wife Carissa, 28, and their three children Kael, 6, Shea, 4, and Maks, 2, died when their SUV collided head-on with another SUV on Highway 4 near Elrose on Friday afternoon. The collision also killed a 71-year-old woman from Swift Current.
On Saturday morning, another former Bronco called Kotyk to break the news to him.
“Their family was awesome, beautiful,” he said of the Gaspers. “I can’t believe that he’s gone.”
Troy was a member of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team for two seasons between 2009-2011.
Kotyk, who played alongside Troy during his time with the Broncos, was a friend of the family and hadn’t seen the Gaspers in person since Troy and Carissa’s wedding a few years ago.
He recalled the outdoor wedding, remembering Troy’s smile as he walked down the aisle with his two oldest children, Kael and Shea.
“To see how they were with their kids it was just, it was unbelievable.
“They loved their three kids.”
They kept in touch in recent years via messages and Facetime. After the April bus crash involving the Humboldt Broncos that took the lives of 16, Carissa sent Kotyk a message and told him “I’ve been thinking a lot about you guys the last couple days when this happened, thinking about all the times we had together.”
He told her he couldn’t wait to visit the family and meet the couple’s third child, Maks.
“I still have that message to go back and look at it — it’s unbelievable.”
Troy, he said was always “the guy” in the Broncos dressing room.
“He would just walk in and he could make every single person in the dressing room laugh. He was one of those guys where every time I was around him I would never stop laughing. He just had a very contagious personality.”
Kotyk described his Broncos teammates as a pretty good group of guys.
He was later traded by the Broncos to the Dauphin Kings.
Riley Gillies, also played with Troy in Humboldt and in Moose Jaw for Midget AAA, and described him as the guy everyone wanted to be around.
“He was the guy who you knew when times were tough he was good to talk to he was really funny he was just a good team guy. He’s exactly what you’re looking for as a team. He was the guy that everyone wanted to be around whether you were at the rink or away from the rink.”
Gillies and former teammates have spoken to each other about the tragedy. He said Troy, Carissa and their children will be dearly missed.
“He’s a good friend and a good teammate on and off the ice.”
The collision that took the lives of the Gasper family has left the community of Rosetown coming to terms with the loss.
Local store owner Kat Sigstad said the young couple were “good, good people,” and she remembers seeing them drive away for their vacation the day before, like so many others from the quiet town of around 2,500 people.
“I saw them — Carissa was just getting in the vehicle, Troy with the kids,” she said, biting back tears.
“We’re waving at each other. And that’s the last wave.”
RCMP responded to reports of a crash at approximately 4:35 p.m. on Friday.
Six people were declared dead at the scene.
The crash site just a few kilometres north of Elrose was cleaned up by the RCMP by Saturday morning, but a burned-out swath of the ditch along the northbound lane and the smell of smoke still lingered in the air.
RCMP Cpl. Rob King said in a news conference that both vehicles were engulfed in flames after the collision.
RCMP have said in a public statement that the investigation is still ongoing, and no cause for the crash has been determined yet.
Sigstad said she’d been friends with the Gasper family for many years, and was close with Troy’s mother and father.
Sandra Mathison, who owns an
antique store in town, said she heard when the vehicles left the RCMP detachment in Rosetown and headed to the scene.
“The first one went by, and then the second one went by a few minutes later, and you just knew ‘oh, something’s wrong,’ ” she said. “A whole family — that’s so sad.”
Mathison said this isn’t the first time in recent memory that the roads near Rosetown were the scene of a collision, referring to the crash that occurred nearby on Highway 7 at the end of May that resulted in a fatality.
And with the amount of traffic on the road for the Canada Day long weekend, she said it was concerning watching the sheer number of vehicles in a big hurry go by on the nearby highway.
An outpouring of support through social media has already begun within Rosetown and around the province. The Rosetown Redwings, a hockey team Troy had played for, posted condolences on their Facebook page Saturday.
The Broncos organization too posted a condolence message on Facebook addressed to the Gaspers’ family members.
And local business in the area, including Sigstad’s, are offering support as well. Sigstad said the deaths were “a huge loss for our community.”
“To know somebody’s just gone, just like that, you wonder why,” Sigstad said.
“But that doesn’t bring them back any.”