The family of a high school football player who has been confirmed brain dead has announced they plan to donate his organs to save seven other lives after he is removed from life support.
Jacquez Welch, a two-way starter at Tampa (Fla.) Northeast High School, collapsed after making a tackle during a Friday night football game against Osceola. He was later diagnosed with AVN, a condition characterized by an irregular connection between the arteries and veins in the brain which apparently caused him to suffer bleeding on the brain which in turn left him brain dead, according to Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS.
MORE: Florida high school football player Jacquez Welch remains on life support after collapsing on field
The Tampa Bay Times reported that Welch was taken off of life support on Monday.
While Welch’s incident gained some attention because it was a head injury that occurred while he was playing football, Welch’s mother, Marcia Nelson, has insisted that the sport had nothing to do with his passing. Rather, doctors have told her that brain AVN’s are very rare and typically don’t show up until adulthood, meaning it was very unlikely that it would have been detected before now. and that his making a tackle before he fell on the field was no related to the condition.
According to reports, Welch had just accepted a scholarship to play football at Division II Concordia University in Minnesota earlier in the week. The last time he touched a football, he scored a touchdown on a 60-yard run.
