LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Little Rock baseball community is working to honor a family who tragically lost three members in a car accident on Thanksgiving Day.
Tony Dunnick has volunteered for Little Rock RBI for nearly twenty years. The last several years his wife Katrina has been right there by his side helping him out at Lamar Porter Field.
"Helping him get the field ready, doing the concessions, helping to get kids to the field," Dillon Hupp said.
Little Rock RBI stands for "reviving baseball in inner cities," and it is a community service program started by the MLB. Commissioner Dillon Hupp said the Dunnick's are the backbone of the program.
"Katrina and Tony and the type of people who give kids rides to the games when they don't have rides," Hupp said.
But last Thursday, Katrina and two of her children were killed in a car accident on I-30 near Bryant coming home from family Thanksgiving.
Their car was pulled over on the side of the road when a semi-truck rammed into their car when they were trying to speed up.
"It's beyond heartbreaking to think about what the RBI season is going to look like next year without Katrina and those kids," Hupp said.
Hupp said he is making sure Little Rock RBI is there for Tony.
"It's incomprehensible the kind of emotional and mental anguish and pain he must be going through right now," he said.
He is encouraging people to donate to the Dunnick family's GoFundMe to cover funeral and hospital expenses. Two of the other kids who were in the car survived, but were badly injured.
"It's just heartbreaking that something so terrible has to happen to people who are so pure and good-hearted," Hupp said.
Hupp said he wants Tony to know his wife and kids will always have a place at Lamar Porter Field.
"You can one-hundred percent bet on it that we're going to find some way to honor Katrina Dunnick and the Dunnick family in the upcoming 2020 Little Rock RBI season," Hupp said.