'Gentle giant' Dylan Tarbi, 13, mourned by family, community

Dylan Tarbi wasn’t the best third-baseman Freeport Area Youth Baseball coaches ever saw.

That didn’t matter to the 13-year-old Buffalo Township boy, several people close to Dylan said Saturday. He always just worked to be his best.

On Thursday, a day before a single-cab pickup fatally struck Dylan as the teen biked home, Dylan’s Pony League team was down 4-1 against Kiski Valley at Freeport Borough Field.

By the fifth inning, Kiski had worn down its already-thin bullpen, Freeport coach Eric Westendorf said. So, Dylan responded — scoring a run with blazing speed on one of two at-bats, and helping rally Freeport to a 6-4 come-from-behind victory.

“If I said, ‘Dylan, I need you to run through this wall so we can win,’ he’d knock himself out doing it,” said Westendorf, 48, the league liaison and a lifelong Freeport resident.

“After he scored that run, a parent told me, ‘I’ve seen Dylan before, but I never knew he was that fast.’

“He always out-worked every other kid on the team. He was a dream to coach.”

Tragic accident

It was nearing dusk on Friday night as Dylan and a friend — also 13 years old and from Buffalo Township — biked home from Cozmic Candy Store. The shop sits in the South Pike Square shopping mall — just down Mulone Drive from Freeport Area Senior High School, which Dylan would’ve attended in two years.

The truck hit the two teens at 7 p.m. as they biked along Cole Road, township police Chief Tim Derringer said.

UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh doctors pronounced Dylan dead at 8:22 p.m., according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. The second boy suffered only minor injuries, Derringer said.

Initial reports show glare from the sun might have distorted the truck driver’s vision on Cole Road, a narrow residential street without sidewalks, Derringer said. The driver, who police did not name, stopped his vehicle after the accident and is cooperating with police.

Some Cole Road residents said the angle of the sun’s glare near sundown — particularly from 5 to 7:30 p.m. — is troubling. One woman has replaced her mailbox multiple times after swerving cars repeatedly knocked it over.

“It’s probably not a safe route or road to be on — the whole thing is very sad,” Derringer said. “As of right now, it looks like it’s just a tragic accident.”

Derringer doesn’t believe at this time that speed or alcohol were a factor in the crash. No charges have been filed.

Gentle giant

Dylan’s parents said the boy was “larger than life” since birth, when he entered the world at 9 pounds, 2 ounces.

His family quickly dubbed Dylan an “old soul” because of his penchant for comforting others and showing kindness, his father, Keith Tarbi, said in an email to TribLive. “Dylan was a gentle giant — he was the epitome of kindness and gentleness.”

“From Day One, he looked up to his older brother, Nathaniel — always trying to do the same activities, even though Nathaniel was almost 4 years older,” Keith Tarbi added. “He truly lived like they were the same age.”

Dylan kept busy, running cross country at Freeport Area Middle School — where he was a seventh-grader and won this year’s annual middle school Turkey Trot fundraiser.

“Our middle school suffered the tragic loss of a wonderful, beautiful young man in Dylan Tarbi,” said Freeport Area superintendent Ian Magness, in a prepared statement. “Our district wishes to reassure our school community that we are prepared to support all of our children and their emotional needs as they return to school this week.”

Dylan exercised his love for the outdoors — and also served his community — with Boy Scouts Birdville Troop 186 in Harrison, said Bob Barrage, a former Scoutmaster. He camped every summer at Heritage Reservation, a Laurel Mountain outpost outside Uniontown, and near Pennsylvania’s border with both West Virginia and Maryland.

Barrage recalled the boy’s can-do attitude while the troop took part in a 30-mile “peddle-n-paddle” route — part canoeing, part biking — in 2022. Keith Tarbi’s car broke down, a wheel literally falling off, while the troop traveled following their trek in the woods along the Allegheny River.

“The cliche of things going wrong is ‘when the wheels come off,’” said Barrage, 64, of Natrona Heights, a self-employed architect who led the troop for 29 years before retiring on Dec. 31. “But it was no big deal for them. They shrugged it off and smiled.”

“Dylan was a good kid, an ideal scout and a natural leader,” said Brian Poprik, 40, of Tarentum, who Barrage passed the Scoutmaster role to recently. “He was always willing to help and excited about the practical side of scouting just as much as advancement.”

Dylan helped work the lemonade stand each summer during festivals at Most Blessed Sacrament, a Natrona Heights church that is part of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh’s Guardian Angels parish. Everyone preferred the lemonade to the troop’s previous detail — funnel cakes, Barrage laughed.

But the teen also took his commitment his community seriously — repeatedly volunteering to collect and deliver canned goods, non-perishable foods and household items through an annual Boy Scouts food drive, Barrage said. In April this year, the troop delivered some 40 boxes of food to the Allegheny Valley Association of Churches food bank.

A standout

Rich Cantolina instantly saw something in Dylan.

For the past year, the Beaver County-bred boxer led classes and training sessions at Sanctuary Boxing Club in New Kensington.

Cantolina sometimes leads as many as 35 children and adults during classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights. He said he’s also trained Pittsburgh Steelers such as linebackers Ryan Shazier and Bud Dupree in the ways of boxing.

But a kid like Dylan stood out immediately.

“He was just a natural — it was actually kind of scary how fast he picked up boxing,” said Cantolina, 34. “In boxing, we call guys like Dylan ‘heavy-handed.’ When you’d hold up the focus mitts for him to hit, your hands would hurt.”

Dylan, though, was not a typical teenage boxer, said Cantolina, who himself is 7-1-1 in professional boxing bouts as a super-welterweight.

“He wasn’t the type of kid who wanted to beat you,” Cantolina said. “Yes, he wanted to be in first, but he wanted to you right there behind him.”

Cantolina strikes a mean stance: lean, 154-pound frame towering above 6 feet tall, arms and neck covered in tattoos. A father of six who opened his church-turned-gym during the covid-19 pandemic, Cantolina sports a tattoo of the Roman numeral VI, or six, just below his left eye.

But that professional boxer fought back tears on Saturday as he talked about his former student.

Dylan wasn’t just a kid training at the facility, Cantolina said. He was a part of its family — and treated it as such.

“I’m a parent and I couldn’t imagine burying my own kid — it’s not something you should have to do,” Cantolina said. “This just eats me up on the inside.”

Dylan’s parents on Saturday took comfort in the details.

The younger of their two children, Dylan recently was confirmed as an official member at East Union Presbyterian Church in Cheswick, Robin Tarbi said.

Dylan had prepared “a statement of faith” for the occasion, noting how photographs of sunsets reminded him of the power of God and of his faith.

“He ended his statement,” his mother said, “by stating, ‘I hope the next time you look at the sun, you will think of God, too.’”