Friends remember man that died after fight at bar in Baldwin as a “gentle soul”

BALDWIN BOROUGH, Pa. — A man died Thursday after a fight involving four men at a bar in Baldwin Borough on Sunday night, officials said.

Mark Thompson, 51, of Pittsburgh, died just before 4 p.m. Thursday at Allegheny General Hospital, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed.

“His children were every thing to him. Anytime you were to talk about his children he would light up. He loved baseball. Baseball was a passion,” explained a friend of Thompson, Todd Kircher. “He loved coaching kids. He had patience with kids. He had a desire to teach kids how to win and how to be competitive.”

Now Kircher and the entire south park baseball community is grieving over Thompson’s unexpected death.

“It was a punch to the gut for sure,” Kircher said. “It knocked the wind out of me. I had to take a seat. It’s something that you never think you would hear and something you don’t hear around this area.”

The fight happened about 11 p.m. Sunday at the Loose Moose Saloon on Brownsville Road in Baldwin.

When police were called to the bar, they were told Thompson was on the floor unconscious and bleeding and CPR was being performed, a criminal complaint stated.

Witnesses told police Thompson had been trying to break up a fight between two men. Then, Zachary Blake, the brother of one of the men, punched Thompson in the face.

As Thompson fell to the ground, Blake got on top of Thompson and continued to punch him several more times in the face and then kicked him in the face, according to the complaint.

Blake, 22, told police that his brother was fighting Thompson and he intervened to protect his brother. He said he punched Thompson “once or twice,” the complaint stated.

Prior to Thompson’s death, Blake was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, harassment and disorderly conduct.

Channel 11 went to the bar and spoke to workers who knew Thompson. They told us they are grieving and they say Thompson wasn’t a fighter, but that he was a gentle soul and loved his children.

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