An automobile crash early Thursday morning took the life of Westhill High School senior Zechariah Brown, a four-year standout on the school’s varsity boys basketball team.
According to the Onondaga County Sheriff’s office, around 1:30 a.m. the 18-year-old Brown and a passenger, 19-year-old Kameron Jones, were driving on Route 695 near the Route 5 split when their car rolled over.
Brown was taken to Upstate University Medical Center, where he passed away shortly after. Brown was not injured.
In 2017, as a freshman, Brown helped Westhill’s boys basketball team win the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class B championship, and as a sophomore helped the Warriors repeat as Section III champions.
In his junior and senior years, Brown led Westhill in scoring and eventually finished with 1,293 career points. He was a three-time All-Central New York selection and was named to the New York State Sportswriter Association’s All-State 10th team for the 2019-20 season after all-state honors the previous two years.
Later on Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of members of the Westhill community gathered to mourn Brown at the school’s athletic complex, despite the state-mandated ban on large social gatherings due to COVID-19.
The mourners either sat on the football field or in the area next to the bleachers, staying six feet apart and wearing masks for an hour. Several different speakers addressed the crowd, including Brown’s basketball teammate, Sean Dadey.
