The 20-year-old College of New Jersey student who was the designated driver in a head-on crash near the Ewing campus early Sunday morning has died of his injuries, the university said Tuesday afternoon.
Michael Sot, a sophomore math major from Clark, was shuttling five friends home Sunday around 2 a.m. when a 2018 Kia Optima heading the opposite direction on Pennington Road crossed the line and struck Sot’s 2007 Dodge Charger, authorities have said. The other driver will now be charged with vehicular homicide.
“This news is heartbreaking. Michael was an outstanding student, and a trusted and caring friend with a bright future ahead of him. The TCNJ community is keeping his family, friends, and loved ones in its thoughts during this tremendously difficult time," TCNJ President Kathryn A. Foster said in a statement.
“Our focus over the coming days and weeks will be on helping our campus community process this devastating loss and providing appropriate resources to those who need assistance,” Foster said.
Sot’s younger brother Jon, a football player at Harvard, tweeted about his brother’s death:
A fundraiser set up by a family friend said Sot “was being a responsible designated driver and making sure his friends got home safe,” at the time of the crash. The fundraiser said Sot suffered head trauma, a punctured lung and received many fractures during the crash.
All eight people involved were seriously injured, and on Monday evening, Ewing police charged the 22-year-old driver of the other car with drunken driving and seven counts of assault by auto.
By Monday, three of the passengers, Sot included, were still hospitalized in critical condition. Four others were still hospitalized but were considered stable, and one, a 21-year-old man, had been released.
Sot was driving a vehicle with five passengers, and four of them were TCNJ students.
Mark Di Ionno Jr., a brother at Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, of which all the male students were members, said the organization appreciates all the love they’ve gotten and donations to the GoFundMe supporting the five students.
“The TCNJ community has backed us up and been behind us the whole way,” Di Ionno said. “There’s a profound sense of positivity through the whole thing.”
School president Foster said in a statement to the school community that the campus' Counseling and Psychological Services is working to secure a space in Brower Student Center for support services.
A spokesperson for the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office said it intends to charge the alleged drunk driver, David Lamar V, of West Windsor, with vehicular homicide. The prosecutor’s office is investigating with Ewing police.
Paige Gross may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @By_paigegross.