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Two Atlanta-area high school coaches face murder charges after one of their players died of heatstroke during conditioning exercises. Now coaches who push kids hard in the heat are being warned.
Imani Bell, an outstanding student-athlete who wore number 23, loved basketball. On August 13, 2019, the 16-year-old junior passed away during conditioning exercises. The coaches of the Elite Scholar Academy organized an outdoor team training, despite a heat index as high as 103.
“Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. How could this have happened?” said his father, Eric Bell. He said emergency room doctors resuscitated his daughter twice.
“The body was so hot he went into cardiac arrest right away,” said Eric Bell. “I was actually in the room, and you know, it’s not a memory I’ll never forget.”
Charges against the teenager’s two high school coaches, Larosa Maria Walker-Asekere and Dwight Broom Palmer, include second degree murder, child cruelty and manslaughter.
According to the grand jury indictment, the defendants caused “excessive physical pain by organizing outdoor conditioning training for student-athletes in dangerous heat,” reports WGCL-TV, a CBS affiliate.
After about an hour of training, Bell struggled to climb the stadium stairs. The autopsy says that, rather than asking for help, a trainer “may have physically helped her up the stairs.”
Bell’s parents filed a complaint earlier this year, alleging that the trainers “observed Imani experiencing early signs of heat illness during outdoor training but nonetheless ordered Imani to continue performing the exercises. conditioning with his team and ordered Imani to climb the steps of the stadium, ”WGCL reports.
The autopsy revealed that she died of hyperthermia – heat stroke.
“There were rules that were broken from start to finish,” said Justin Miller, an attorney representing the Bell family who is now suing Clayton County, Ga. An hour before these conditioning exercises, the county warned all of its schools: “… Notice of heat … No sport or club should be outside.”
“There is no coach to help him,” Miller said. “There is no ice bath to put her in. Now there is a way to help her then.”
Bell’s dad is also a high school basketball coach. He sees a message in these murder charges for coaches around the world. “Every kid you train, treat them like yours,” said Eric Bell.
Now pushing athletes like Bell beyond reason could put coaches behind bars.
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