FAIRBURN, Ga. (AP) - The death of a suburban Atlanta high school player who suffered a spinal cord injury during a preseason football game has prompted an investigation by Georgia authorities.
De'Antre Turman, a 16-year-old junior at Creekside High School in Fairburn, Ga., fractured a vertebrae in his upper spinal cord during a scrimmage Friday night, investigators in the Atlanta area's Fulton County Medical Examiner's officials have said.
Georgia High School association executive director Ralph Swearngin told CBS Atlanta on Monday among other things, the agency will investigate what type of equipment Turman was wearing.
"As we evolve our rules and policies, it's good to have data driving those decisions, not just someone in a room saying this is what we need to do," he told the television station.
One of Turman's coaches from an after-school college prep program told WXIA-TV the teen appeared to go limp immediately after tackling the receiver from the opposing team.
"It was a fundamental tackle," Glenn Ford told the television station.