‘Driven’ young rugby player mourned
Daniel Baldwin was known as the ‘‘man with the plan’’. But no plan could account for what happened to the 19-year-old on a Wellington rugby field.
It was a Saturday game at Porirua’s Ngati Toa Domain when teammates noticed Daniel showing worrying symptoms. The Wellington Football Club’s colts player’s condition worsened, and ambulance officers at the domain tried to help before he was rushed to Wellington Hospital for brain surgery. He died there on Wednesday night, surrounded by friends and family.
Ortega Fish Shack, the Wellington restaurant where he worked, said Baldwin was more than just an employee. ‘‘He was pretty much family’’. He was also ‘‘Big Dan our executive kitchen porter … one of the hardest-working, driven and well-rounded guys we have had‘‘.
It remains unclear what exactly happened on Saturday, and Baldwin’s family do not want to speculate. For them - for now at least - it is just a ‘‘tragic accident‘‘.
The Victoria University student, who was studying psychology, statistics and criminology, loved dogs and planned to be a police dog handler.
His family said the memories that would remain were of a ‘‘young man with an enormous zest for life, who had his future mapped out’’, and a ‘‘larger than life young man, with a strong moral compass, who embraced life in everything he did’’.
‘‘To all of us he was always ‘Dan, the man with the plan’, he even called himself that,’’ his father said. His sports extended to skiing and a black belt in karate. He was a young man ‘‘always challenging himself to be the best he could’’.