Jordan McNair: University of Maryland reaches $ 3.5 million deal with family of football player

Details of the deal became known on Friday as part of the agenda for the Maryland Public Works Council meeting, which is expected to approve the deal on January 27.

“This has been a long and painful struggle, but we will try to find closure, although this is a wound that will never, ever fully heal,” Jordan’s parents Marty McNair and Tonya Wilson said in a joint statement, according to the ESPN .

An independent medical report found several problems with his treatment, including failure to assess his vital signs, not having adequate cooling devices, and failure to quickly recognize that he was having a heat illness. More than an hour passed before a football coach called 911 after McNair showed the first symptoms of heat stroke.

“We are focused on honoring Jordan’s legacy so that his death was not in vain. This includes protecting student athletes at all levels of the competition, raising awareness, education and preventing all heat-related illnesses, empowering students athletes and introduce legislation across the country so that no parent should have to wait that long for closure when their child has been treated unfairly or unfairly, “added the parents’ statement to ESPN.

On May 29, 2018, McNair was removed from the camp, where the air temperature was 81 degrees at 5:22 pm. That was 34 minutes after he said he had cramps and was bent at the waist, according to the report.

About 28 minutes after being taken off the field, McNair’s mood dramatically worsened – a sign of heat stroke – and a coach called the team doctor, who advised calling 911, the report said.

In August 2018, Athletic Director Damon Evans and then University President Wallace D. Loh apologized to McNair’s family during a meeting in Baltimore. Loh said he told the family that “the university accepts legal and moral responsibility for the mistakes that our training team made on that fateful training day”.

“The university owes him an apology. You have entrusted Jordan to our care and he will never return home,” he added.

“This is by no means a reflection of my opinion of coach Durkin as a person. However, a game is in the university’s interest,” said Loh.

Since McNair’s death, the university has added cooling stations, started testing players’ hydration in training, increased the length of breaks, added more coaches and doctors to events. The team also received more training.