Former SWCC student dies from work injuries

A former Southwestern Community College student died Monday in Missouri related to an electrical shock.

Collin Sager, 20, of Stanberry, Missouri, died of injuries from a fall at an Agency agribusiness. According to the St. Joseph, Missouri, Post the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department reported Sager, an electrician, fell off a platform while working on a grain bin at AthaBrothers Agriculture after apparently suffering an electric shock. First responders arrived to perform CPR, but he was pronounced dead.

The investigation into the death continues. Sager had been a Southwestern student earlier this year.

Sager was part of a generous gift during his time at Southwestern. He was a group of five friends who gave a new bicycle to a college employee who walked to campus. As part of Random Act of Kindness Day, Sager, Nash English, Kurtis Noonan, Robert Norton and Ross Tiedeman pooled funds Feb. 16, 2022, for a bicycle for the employee known as Tyler. The five saw Tyler on campus first, noticing his work ethic and friendliness. They saw him around town and figured out he got to campus each day on a worn out mountain bike.

“He’s always dancing or cleaning something,” Sager said about his work.

In early 2022, the group of students had noticed Tyler’s bike was showing additional wear. They began to wonder how Tyler was even making it to work.

“Collin made a comment that his [Tyler’s] tires were balling up and looked like they could pop,” Tiedeman explained. “I told Ross that we should buy him a bike, so Ross talked to Nash and Nash said ‘yes we should do it, I’ll help out;’ so then we talked and said if a bunch of people all went in together, it really wouldn’t be that much.”

So that’s when the group of five decided to team up and go shopping.

“We would have loved to buy him a car,” Noonan said, “but you know, we’re a bunch of college students.”

The five purchased Tyler a mountain bike plus a bike lock, headlight, taillight, water bottle holder and air pump.

The next day, Dan Marcus, Spartan Café food service director, assisted the group. Marcus stopped to pick up Tyler on his way to work so Tyler would not end up having two bikes on campus. The five contacted Marcus to make sure the time was right, and then brought the bike in to The Caf’ to surprise Tyler.

Tyler took the bike outside and called his mom.

“These awesome guys just gave me a brand new bike,” he told his mom.

Then he went one step further and put his mom on speaker phone so she could meet the guys.

“She was like ‘you guys are so cool,’ and told us we were some great students,” Noonan said. “Even after we left, he [Tyler] was still just standing there looking at it [the bike].”

The donation received some regional attention in Iowa.

Southwestern Community College contributed to this story.