College basketball star, 20, 'dies suddenly' from cardiac event
20-year-old college basketball star Derek Gray died unexpectedly last week after suffering a ‘cardiac event’, according to his coach.
“Warhawk Nation mourns the loss of Derek Gray, a student-athlete on the Warhawk men’s basketball team, who passed away unexpectedly on July 24th, 2022, playing the game he loved,” the school’s athletic department said in a statement.
“It was a cardiac event,” University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Men’s Basketball Coach Pat Miller told local media. “He had a blockage.”
The coach said he originally thought the athlete was having a seizure when he collapsed.
“It was just a very surreal situation where you’re thinking, ‘Okay, he’s going to be all right,’ and then you’re very scared and the longer it went on, it became apparent that this was extraordinarily serious,” Miller said. “I’ve been around for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of different things. It was one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever been a part of.”
“He was a great kid,” Miller added. “He was very intelligent. He and I had long talks about basketball, life and family. He was a very engaging, sincere person. He was loved by his teammates. He had an ability to connect with people. And he showed up and played hard — to do what he could for the team. There are not enough good things I can say about him. The shock of this is beyond words.”
Gray’s sudden death came just days before #DiedSuddenly began trending on Twitter following the sudden deaths of four young Canadian physicians within one week.
The hospitals where the physicians were employed rushed to assure the public that the deaths were not due to the COVID-19 injections. North York General Hospital also contacted the Toronto Sun to assure the public that the sudden death this month of Emergency Department Director Dr. Paul Hannam, an Olympic athlete who suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a jog on July 17th, was not linked to the COVID-19 shots.
The deceased doctors were joined over the weekend by Dr. Candace Nayman, a 27-year-old triathlete who collapsed during swimming last week and died Thursday.
Dr. Nayman’s case is similar to that of Olympic swimmer Anita Alvarez, who America’s Frontline News reported last month also collapsed during training and was rescued just in time by her coach. Alvarez had previously said she was “grateful” to have gotten the COVID-19 injections.
