FITZGERALD, GA (WALB) – Two weeks after 16-year-old DJ Searcy died at football camp, shocking allegations were made Tuesday against the Fitzgerald High coaching staff and personnel.
"The coaches announce to the team there will be no water breaks," said Benjamin Crump, attorney representing Searcy's parents. "During the endurance drill, DJ falls to the ground cramping. He tells the coaches he can't go on."
At a press conference in Decatur, Crump referred to the morning of August 2 while Searcy and his teammates were practicing at Florida Bible Camp near Lake City, Florida.
"Within an hour-and-a-half later, he's unconscious and unresponsive," Crump said.
"If they had called 911 and notified me, we wouldn't be here," said Searcy's mother, Michelle, as she gripped a picture of her late son.
Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, lawyers for Searcy's parents say he passed out in a bathroom at the camp. Later that night they say he threw up. But the events that happened the following Tuesday morning, lawyers believe, led to his death.
"If a kid tells you he's cramping and can't go on at 100 degree index temperature, you don't tell him you got to suck it up. You get that kid help," Crump said. "This was such a preventable death."
Ben Hill County School Superintendent Nancy Whidden watched the press conference from her office. She said, "These are strong allegations. It's not at all what I would have expected to have happened."
Whidden says she talked to coaches about the events prior to and leading up to Searcy's death.
"These coaches treat these children as their own children. In fact our coaches do have their own children on the field. So some of these allegations, I find it very hard to believe that they treated children in that manner," she said.
While the Searcy's attorney called on the GHSA to look into possible wrong doing by the coaching staff, Whidden say's she seen video tape of that morning's practice and said nothing she saw indicated anything was wrong.
"He was performing as all the other players were performing. There was no evidence of any heat. In fact, I'm told it was not even hot that morning," said Whidden who added that water tables were also visible in the video. That footage is now in the hands of the school system's attorney.
The press conference turned emotional for Searcy's parents. A tearful Michelle said, "The one time he needed them(coaches), they failed him."
While the family is mourning, Whidden says the school system and Searcy's coaches are grieving as well, but answers into death still remain unclear.
"It's hard to understand when there's a death like this, but our coaches are men of integrity, and they follow the GHSA guidelines."
An official with the GHSA told us today by phone that the organization had not been contacted by attorneys to conduct an investigation.
In terms of heat policies, each school system is required by the association to form its own heat related rules.
The coroner in Lake City, Florida says it could be up to three months before they know Searcy's cause of death.
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