R.I.P.

15-Year-Old Basketball Player Who Collapsed During Game Dies After 22 Days on Ventilator

Preston Settles, who went into cardiac arrest and collapsed just off the court on Feb. 5, had “grit and tenacity” that allowed him to “just keep going and going and going.”

A teenager in Massachusetts has died more than three weeks after going into cardiac arrest and collapsing during a high school basketball game earlier this month, according to his family. Preston Settles was 15 years old when he died Sunday night. “Our wonderful, previously healthy, handsome, and perpetually happy son Preston Blair Settles has transitioned to his next journey,” the family’s statement read, according to CBS’ Boston affiliate. Settles “had a lot of grit and tenacity,” his mother, Dr. Lisa Owens, told The Boston Globe on Monday. “He was a grinder. He worked really hard. He would just keep going and going and going. And we really admire that about him.” After a series of surgeries, Settles was heavily sedated and placed on a ventilator. But two weeks after being rushed to the hospital on Feb. 5, a head MRI showed “devastating changes to his brain from the lack of oxygen,” according to Owens. It was those results that led the family to make the “loving and painful” decision to take their son off the ventilator, Owens said.