DALLAS (AP) – Ty Jordan, a first-year star who ran back to the University of Utah, died at a hospital in the Dallas area after an accidental shot, officials said on Sunday.
University officials announced Jordan’s death on Saturday, the day after being named the Pac-12 rookie of the year, but did not disclose details.
Jordan, 19, died in an emergency room at a hospital in Denton at about 10:45 pm on Christmas Day, according to the medical examiner’s records.
Police officers responded about an hour earlier to reports of a shooting at a house in Denton, a city 40 miles northeast of downtown Dallas. Police officers discovered that a man had accidentally shot himself in the hip and started giving first aid, Denton police spokeswoman Allison Beckwith told the Associated Press on Saturday. She said the man later died in a hospital and that investigators did not know how he shot himself.
Beckwith declined to identify the man by name, but online case records from the Tarrant County Medical Examiner on Sunday showed it was Jordan.
The cause of Jordan’s death is listed as a “gunshot wound to the abdomen” in the records. His death has not yet been released and officials at the coroner’s office could not be reached immediately for comment on Sunday. Denton police did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Jordan appeared as a tailback playing in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Denton.
Jeff Neill, the head coach of the school where Jordan played, told Dallas Morning News, “His smile was contagious and his spirit shone in everyone who knew him.”