Brawley teen dies in PMH emergency room, falls ill at BUHS summer school

BRAWLEY — A 16-year-old Brawley Union High School student died in the Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District emergency room on Thursday afternoon, June 27, apparently taken to the hospital after her physical education class at the school. summer.

Much of the community — including parents of youth in the Brawley Union High School District — became aware of the incident through numerous social media posts, MoveOn.org petitions and sign-up sheets MealTrain.com virtual emails to a number of posts expressing anger over her death or memorializing the girl, whose identity and photo were widely shared.

For its part, the Brawley Union High School District did not officially reach out to parents until it sent out a massive message announcing that a “video” or “audio” statement would be forthcoming. When this message arrived around 1:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. on Friday, June 28, it was almost 24 hours after the teen's death.

“Due to a medical emergency on campus and out of respect for the privacy of the family involved, we are unable to release further details regarding this incident or respond to specific requests at this time,” the female voice said in the BUHSD statement. “We recognize that many of our students may be impacted by the incident and therefore want to inform you that we have a list of community resources available to you. If you would like additional assistance regarding the assistance that may be available, please contact Christina Velasco in the Superintendent’s Office at 760-312-6063. Thank you. This message will now repeat. To end this call, please hang up.”

Top Brawley officials returned a message seeking more detailed comment toward the end of the day, but offered nothing new. BUHSD Superintendent Simon Canalez emailed to say the district would stand by its original statement from earlier in the day: recording.

It’s unclear how solid the chain of events described in MoveOn.org — and other similar posts around the web — is, but it appears that the teen was forced to run laps in a hot gym, as a sort of punishment for being late to class. At one point, despite the girl asking her teacher to stop running, she was told to keep going and eventually fell and began having convulsions. There’s more to the story as described, including who the author thinks should be at fault.

From there, the teen was taken to the emergency room and, according to Imperial County Sheriff's Office daily activity logs, the county coroner's office was called at 3:40 p.m. and remained until 6 p.m.

“At this stage it is too early to determine the cause of death. Our investigation revealed that there was no known history of drug use or underlying medical conditions,” said Imperial County Deputy Coroner Rogelio Tafoya.

“Hyperthermia may have played a role, but we will know more once the autopsy is done,” Tafoya added. Hyperthermia is an elevated body temperature.

The Brawley Police Department was contacted to see if they were involved or had any information on this case, and Cmdr. Jonathan Blackstone said the ministry was not involved.