Examiner: MU's O'Neal died from meningitis

The player's family still questions the promptness of medical attention.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A University of Missouri football player who collapsed after a preseason workout last month died of viral meningitis, the Boone County medical examiner said Tuesday.

Swelling in the brain subsequently affected his heart and caused Aaron O'Neal, 19, to lose his ability to properly breathe, Medical Examiner Valerie Rao said. Toxicology tests ruled out steroids, performance supplements, alcohol and other drugs as contributing factors.

"The manner of death is natural," Rao told a roomful of reporters, photographers and television camera operators crammed into her small office for a press conference.

But while the cause of death was not directly related to an on-field injury or a training regimen, the autopsy results still don't resolve questions about O'Neal's care, said St. Louis attorney Bob Blitz, who is representing Aaron O'Neal's father in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Boone County Circuit Court.

The suit names 12 university athletics officials, including the head trainer, head strength and conditioning coach and Athletic Director Mike Alden.

"When you have viral meningitis, these symptoms start showing before," he said. "Nobody really dies from viral meningitis unless you have symptoms."

O'Neal, 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, started to struggle during conditioning drills about 45 minutes into the July 12 session, during which players wore shorts, T-shirts and football cleats but no helmets or pads. As required by NCAA rules, head Coach Gary Pinkel and his assistants did not attend the sessions, which are billed as voluntary.

The 19-year-old backup middle linebacker slumped to the ground after the final drill and was helped off the field by a teammate.

Before he was taken to the hospital, O'Neal was driven to the football team offices -- a delay that Blitz said proved fatal. Both University Hospital and the Tom Taylor building are across the street from Faurot Field, but on opposite sides. O'Neal was in full cardiac arrest by the time a campus police officer and paramedics arrived at the Taylor building.

"Had they taken him to the hospital (immediately) or even given him oxygen on the field, he'd be alive today," Blitz told The Associated Press. Viral meningitis "has nothing to do with the negligence of not getting him to the hospital."

Rao's autopsy report -- the results of interviews with each of the 11 other players, eight conditioning coaches and three trainers present at the July 12 workout -- also raises questions about the moments leading up to O'Neal's death.

O'Neal repeatedly lost his balance during a stretching exercise and told a player and a conditioning coach, both unnamed by Rao, that "he could not see and his vision was blurred."

Once O'Neal was on the ground after the final drill, a trainer who examined him concluded that "there was nothing that could be done," Rao wrote.

In the team locker room after the workout, O'Neal's tongue had turned white and he was "gasping and moaning," according to Rao's report.

An athletics staff member, identified in the lawsuit as Josh Stoner, associated director of strength and conditioning, then flagged down a university groundskeeper and, with the help of another football player, loaded an unconscious O'Neal into a pickup truck, which took O'Neal to the Taylor building.

In the football training room, attempts to revive O'Neal with an automatic defibrillator before paramedics arrived were unsuccessful.He was pronounced dead at University Hospital at 4:05 p.m., or just over 90 minutes after the workout ended.

Rao completed an autopsy the day after O'Neal's death, ruling out infection, trauma and foul play as causes of death. She also ordered an extensive series of pathological and toxicology tests that took four to six weeks to complete.

The lawsuit does not name the University of Missouri-Columbia as a defendant because of the legal principle of sovereign immunity, Blitz said.

An athletics spokesman referred questions about the lawsuit to university lawyers, who did not immediately return calls Tuesday afternoon.

Rao said she was not able to determine how long O'Neal had suffered from lymphocytic meningitis before he died. Nor has she been able to determine the specific type of virus that killed O'Neal. Additional tests to determine the culprit are under way at the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, she said.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the tissues and infection of the fluid covering the brain and spinal cord, and can be transmitted by viruses or bacteria. Signs of infection include fever, headaches, nausea and other flu-like symptoms. Viral meningitis is serious, but rarely fatal, while the bacterial variety can quickly cause death or disability.

Although the Food and Drug Administration has approved a vaccine for bacterial meningitis, no specific treatment is available to prevent viral meningitis, according to the CDC.

A 2004 state law requires all students at Missouri's public universities and colleges who live on campus to either receive the vaccine for meningococcal meningitis or sign a waiver.

The CDC says viral meningitis can be contagious, but O'Neal's teammates and other students who may have come in contact with him are not at risk of infection, Rao said.

University officials reiterated that point in a written statement.

"There is no apparent reason to believe that any of Aaron's teammates or classmates are at risk of developing meningitis," the statement said. "The medical examiner has not recommended any precautions or other measures to be taken at this time, nor has otherwise suggested that there is a public health risk."