Questions arise in football player’s death

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A Missouri football player who died after collapsing at the end of a preseason workout wasn’t immediately taken to the hospital across the street but was instead driven to the team offices, a university police report shows.

Aaron O’Neal, 19, was “in full cardiac arrest” by the time campus police officer Clayton Henke and University Hospital paramedics arrived at the Tom Taylor Building on July 12, Henke wrote in a police report obtained by The Associated Press.

“He was brought to our door in the back of a pickup from afternoon workouts,” athletic trainer Greg Nagel told emergency dispatchers in a 911 call from the Taylor building, according to a copy of the call obtained by the AP. “We need someone here in a hurry.”

University Hospital and the Taylor building are across the street from Faurot Field, but on opposite sides.

Fifteen minutes after Nagel’s call to 911, Henke was sent to the scene at 3:24 p.m., nearly one hour after the conclusion of the hourlong voluntary workout.

O’Neal, 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, started to struggle during conditioning drills about 45 minutes into the session, during which players wore shorts, T-shirts and football cleats.

The middle linebacker slumped to the ground after the final drill and was helped off the field by a teammate.

O’Neal was unconscious when he arrived at the Taylor building, assistant athletic trainer Alfred Castillo told university police. O’Neal was taken there rather than the nearby hospital “so that O’Neal could be seen by staff members,” Henke wrote.

It was not clear exactly when O’Neal fell unconscious.

O’Neal was pronounced dead at the hospital at 4:05, or just more than 90 minutes after the workout ended. The Boone County medical examiner did an autopsy the day after O’Neal’s death, ruling out infection, trauma and foul play as causes of death. Complete results won’t be available for many weeks.

While the final report remains incomplete, the county’s deputy medical examiner said the circumstances surrounding O’Neal’s death require systematic changes to the way such workouts are conducted and monitored.

“Clearly, everybody felt that this was just athletic fatigue and he felt fine,” said Eddie Adelstein, associate professor of pathology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to say that anyone who shows fatigue at the level he did, the rational thing would have been to stop and examine him.”