A Franklin High School student died after experiencing a medical emergency Wednesday morning, the school said in an email to faculty and parents.
Baltimore County Fire Department said crews responded around 9:15 a.m. to reports of a child experiencing a medical emergency on the football field at the high school in Reisterstown. First responders found “the child in critical condition with lifesaving procedures already in progress,” the department said. Fire officials took over lifesaving measures and tookthe child to a hospital in critical condition.
“The student experienced a medical emergency this morning and was transported to the hospital where he later passed away. We are devastated by this news,” Principal J. O’Connell Kieran wrote in the Wednesday email. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the student’s family and loved ones. We will share more information as soon as we are permitted to do so.”
Information about the student’s identity or the nature of the emergency was not immediately made available.
All public high school fall practices started Wednesday. Fall sports for public schools include football, boys and girls soccer, field hockey, volleyball, cross country and golf.
Counseling and support for students and staff is being offered Thursday by members of the school district’s Traumatic Loss Team, according to the email.
At the high school Thursday afternoon, two young people were on the field tossing a football back and forth, while a few people walked the track. Basketball courts, tennis courts, outdoor baseball and soccer fields were not in use.
The teenager, who anonymous sources confirmed was a football player, is the second Frankin High student to die in two months.
In July, 18-year-old Franklin football player JaJa Williams died after riding a utility task vehicle off a cliff while at a family gathering in West Virginia, family members told The Baltimore Sun at the time of the incident. Williams, from Reisterstown, died at the scene, and five others were injured, his family said.
Two football players’ deaths in the past several years have led to changes in Maryland law.
In 2018, University of Maryland player Jordan McNair collapsed after a conditioning test from exertional heatstroke. The freshman and graduate of McDonogh School in Reisterstown died after a two-week hospitalization at Shock Trauma.
His death moved his family and Maryland legislators to pass the Jordan McNair Safe and Fair Play Act in 2021, requiring athletic departments to provide guidelines for preventing and treating brain injuries, heat-related illnesses and other conditions.
That same year, Elijah Gorham, a 17-year-old Baltimore City player, suffered a fatal traumatic brain injury while playing for Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School.
The Elijah Gorham Act became law in 2022, requiring all middle and high schools in Maryland to develop emergency action plans for all of their athletic venues, including for the use of defibrillators, which must be a “brief walk” from an athletic practice or event, and cooling equipment for heatstroke, which must be “readily available.”
The law was passed a day after the city settled with Gorham’s family. The lawsuit compels each city high school to hire an athletic trainer by the 2024-25 academic year.
The Baltimore County school system has 12 athletic trainers who work at a primary school. They also have a secondary assignment, helping to assist at the county’s schools without an athletic trainer, according to the county athletics office. The district budgeted to hire six additional athletic trainers this fiscal year.
Baltimore Sun reporters Tony Roberts, Abigail Gruskin and Jacob Steinberg contributed to this article.
