With a scholarship offer from the University of Kentucky already in hand, 11th grader De’Antre Turman was a rising football star at his Fulton County high school.
But during a pre-season scrimmage Friday night at Benjamin Bannecker High School in College Park, a routine tackle suddenly turned deadly for the 16-year-old athlete at Fairburn’s Creekside High.
Turman died of a broken neck later Friday night at Grady Memorial Hospital. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said Saturday that Turman’s death resulted from his neck vertebrae being broken “due to blunt force trauma.”
“Our hearts and prayers go out to the family of this student,” Fulton County school system spokeswoman Samantha Evans said. “This is a truly horrific way to begin a school year.”
The last time that a Georgia high school athlete died as the result of direct injuries during a football game or training was in 2009. Roy White, a running back at Cook High School in Adel, died after being tackled and hit in the chest during spring practice.
Georgia High School Association Executive Director Ralph Swearngin said he couldn’t recall any other similar deaths as a result of injury or collision in the past 10 years. Several football players have died in recent years from heat stroke or heart conditions.
Calls to Creekside head coach Olten Downs were not immediately returned.
Turman’s former head coach said the young athlete was a quiet, dedicated player.
“He’s one of the best kids I’ve ever dealt with in my 18 years of coaching, period, hands down,” said Johnny T. White, Creekside’s head coach from 2009 to 2011. “He was quiet but always smiling. He had a real good spirit. It was always yes sir, no sir. He enjoyed his team, and he loved his teammates. Just a great kid.”
White heard the news from a Creekside parent who saw the scrimmage. White was Turman’s head coach when the player was a freshman.
Now an assistant coach at Langston Hughes High School in Fairburn, White said he was told by a parent of another Creekside player that Turman was making what appeared to be a routine tackle when he was injured.
Swearngin said the GHSA will investigate the circumstances that led to Turman’s death to try to avoid similar tragedies in the future.
“We’ll try to analyze if things can be be avoided. Unfortunately, life has risks, and we’re constantly trying to limit those,” he said.
“Any kind of death of an adolescent, it’s a tragedy,” Swearngin said. “You think about the loss to the family and a young life being cut off, whether it’s an athletic event or car accident or natural causes. As a father and grandfather, it strikes you personally.”
Turman, a 5-foot-11, 164-pound cornerback for the Creekside Seminoles, got his first major-college scholarship offer from Kentucky, said Glenn Ford, Turman’s coach with the iDareU training program in Atlanta.
“He was a good kid, an outstanding football player, and loved his parents,” Ford said. “He lost his mom a year ago, but persevered through everything and loved the game he died for. He will be missed.”
In May, Turman attended the RisingSeniors.com camp and earned an invitation on the spot to participate in the annual December all-star football game, which features 90 of the state’s top high school juniors.
Based on the usual college recruiting process, the early offer from Kentucky and his selection for the all-star game pegged Turman as one of the state’s top football prospects for the 2015 class. He was one of less than 50 high school juniors in Georgia to have reported college scholarship offers so far.
“He was definitely one of the best players at the camp, and the thing I really loved about him was that he was real quiet and reserved,” said Joe Burns, co-founder of RisingSeniors.com. “He was one of those kids that was really focused, and trying to make the most out of the opportunity.”
At Creekside, Turman was the most recent standout at defensive back in a long tradition of heralded players at the position, including NFL Pro Bowler Eric Berry, former Florida State University safety Terrance Parks, Auburn safety Josh Holsey, and current Creekside senior Evan Berry.
Plans are in the works to honor Turman, Burns said. “My main thing is that we want to do our part to make sure people never forget him,” he said.
A friend of Turman’s, Josh Poole, said a vigil is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday at Ben Hill Recreation Center in Fairburn.
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