A U.S. grand jury has charged two coaches with murder and child cruelty in the death of a Georgia high school basketball player who suffered a heat stroke after practicing outdoors in hot weather, an attorney for the player’s family said Tuesday. The Atlanta-area grand jury indicted Larosa Walker-Asekere and Dwight Palmer last month, according to court records and news outlets. Imani Bell, a 16-year-old junior at Elite Scholars Academy in Clayton County, was participating in required conditioning drills for the girls’ basketball team Aug. 13, 2019, when she collapsed after running up the football stadium steps, according to a lawsuit her family filed in February against administrators at the school. The temperature was more than 35 degrees Celsius, and the area was under a heat advisory. Imani died later that day of heat-related cardiac arrest and kidney failure, according to the suit. The family’s lawsuit says school officials violated a Georgia High School Association rule banning outdoor practices in weather conditions such as those that Imani faced. It also says they never properly measured the temperature in advance. (SD-Agencies) |