Two Georgia high school basketball coaches have been charged by a grand jury with murder and child cruelty related to a player's death.
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Imani Bell was 16 when she suffered heatstroke during an indoor practice where temperatures topped out at 100-degrees in 2019, her family's attorney said, CBS Sports reported.
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The Atlanta-area grand jury indicted Larosa Walker-Asekere and Dwight Palmer, Bell's coaches at Elite Scholars Academy in Clayton County.
Bell had gotten heatstroke during a practice where the girls' basketball team participated in conditioning drills on Aug. 13, 2019. According to the lawsuit her family filed in February against the school's administrators, she collapsed while running up the football stadium steps.
The area where the team was conditioning was under a heat advisory. According to the lawsuit, Bell died of heart-related cardiac arrest and kidney failure later in the day after the practice was completed.
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One of the attorneys for the family, Justin Miller, said on Tuesday that the indictment "sends a signal that the DA is taking this seriously," according to the Associated Press.
However, Miller said he wants the case to move forward "swiftly."
"The point of the case is the prosecution, not just the charges," he said.
Miller said that Walker-Asekere was the head basketball coach and that Palmer was an assistant; both were at the site during the practice and in charge of the children.
The family's lawsuit says school officials violated Georgia High School Association's rule that bans practices outdoors in the weather conditions that Bell faced. It also claims that they never measured the temperature to make sure the conditions were safe.