Boy, 13, Dies Over a Month After Sustaining Brain Injury During Basketball Game: ‘He Just Never Woke Up’

A 13-year-old boy who was hospitalized after sustaining a brain injury during a basketball game in March has died.

Shama’ar Jefferson died this month, weeks after being hospitalized for injuries he sustained during a sports tournament on March 30, according to a Facebook post from the organization Just a Kid from Wichita.

The group, which provides basketball camps for kids in Kansas, expressed condolences to Brandon Cornwall and Shaquela Cornwell, Jefferson's father and mother, respectively, along with his "family, friends, teammates and classmates."

Jefferson began feeling unwell midway through the basketball tournament, according to local outlets KWCH-TV, KSNW-TV and KAKE-TV.

The teen told coaches that his head had been hurting and he was suffering from blurry vision after the first half of the game, per KWCH-TV. Jefferson was then given a concussion test and passed, but he later collapsed when he stood up and moved to grab his bag behind the bench, KAKE-TV reported.

The teen was taken to Wesley Children’s Hospital, where doctors confirmed that he had been suffering from a brain bleed that was caused by a ruptured blood vessel, according to KAKE-TV.

Jefferson underwent surgery and was then placed in the ICU. “He just never woke up from the injury,” his mother Shaquela later told KAKE-TV.

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Jefferson's family detailed in a GoFundMe page that they moved the teen to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, where they sought a “second opinion in his care giving” from a pediatric specialist team. 

“He was just doing something he loved, playing basketball,” Shaquela told KAKE-TV. “It’s hard to see him go from that to fighting for his life.”

Jefferson’s parents told KAKE-TV and KSNW-TV that he was an eighth grade honor student at Stucky Middle School and had aspirations to make the Wichita Heights High School varsity basketball team the following school year.

They also described him as someone who was easy to “love," stating, "If you met him, you [loved] him. If you know him, you love him."

"He has touched so many people just by his smile, so just to know that so many people care, even people who don't know him," they continued.