Sixth Grader Collapses, Dies At Non-Contact Football Practice

A 12-year-old boy died suddenly during a non-contact football practice last week.

Elijah Jordan Brown-Garcia, a sixth-grade student at KIPP Rise Academy in Newark, N.J., was running drills when he collapsed and became unresponsive. He later died at University Hospital.

Elijah played for the Essex County Predators League with his 10-year-old brother. It was his brother who called Elijah's mom, Raven Brown, to tell her he was not responding.

According to Raven, no one performed CPR on her son, and it took a long time for the ambulance to arrive.

"I said, 'What are they doing? What is anybody doing?' And he said, 'They are pouring water on him, and they are fanning him.' And that’s when I got my kids together and I said, 'I’m on my way,'" she said.

Raven said her son had no prior health issues and that he did not get hit during practice.

"No contact," she said. "It was just drills running back and forth."

A cause of death has not been disclosed.

This tragic story is yet another in the rise in sudden collapses among young adults, as well as a surge in cardiovascular symptoms.

Official provisional mortality statistics from the CDC show a rise in "major cardiovascular diseases" among those aged 15 to 39. The numbers heightened in 2021, when most subjects received the Covid-19 vaccine, by choice or force.

In an OutKick column last month, Bobby Burack explored these events in detail.

We don't know for sure that the vaccine is to blame. But when healthy kids are collapsing left and right, it's long past the time to explore that possibility.

Elijah's family deserves answers. We all do.