Burbank student collapses during gym class and dies
An 11-year-old boy collapsed and died after running less than a lap during gym class at his Burbank middle school, authorities said Friday.
Austin Anthony Cook, a sixth-grader at John Muir Middle School, was doing a standard fitness run on the outdoor track Thursday when he collapsed, said Joel Shapiro, a deputy superintendent for the Burbank Unified School District. Shapiro said Austin was known to be athletic and in “excellent physical condition.”
His death was the second running-related fatality of a Southern California student in recent months.
“I don’t believe he’d done any more than a lap, the teacher told me, and he stumbled and fell down,” Shapiro said. He said he believed the lap length was less than a quarter of a mile.
Paramedics arrived about 10:30 a.m. Thursday and performed CPR on Austin when he stopped breathing, Shapiro said. The boy was taken to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:44 p.m., according to Burbank police, who said the cause of death had not been determined.
“We know the doctor spent over two hours with him at the hospital trying to revive him,” Shapiro said.
Officials found “nothing in his record to indicate a problem,” he said.
“He played football, basketball, he was friendly,” Shapiro said, adding that he had heard “unbelievably positive remarks from every student and teacher who dealt with him.”
About two months ago, Megan Myers, 14, a cross-country runner at Dana Hills High School, collapsed while competing in a three-mile race. She felt faint about two miles into the run and was given liquids to help with dehydration, but when she got up to walk, she collapsed. Megan later died at a hospital.
Officials determined she had died of multifocal myocarditis, or an inflammation of the heart. Dr. Morton Kern, associate chief of cardiology at UCI Medical Center in Orange, said the inflammation is rare but more often affects younger people.
An autopsy of Austin is scheduled for today at the earliest, said Capt. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles coroner’s office.
At the middle school on Friday, officials provided the more than 1,400 students with access to a crisis-intervention team of school counselors and psychologists.
“This is very difficult,” Shapiro said. “I don’t think students at this age quite understand how to cope with a loss of this type.”
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