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Lack Of Transparency Surrounds Death Of GCCC Football Player

SAM ZEFF / KCUR 89.3
The narrow alley near the dorms where Braeden Bradforth collapsed after a conditioning practice at Garden City Community College in August.

The lawyer for the family of a New Jersey teen who died after football practice at Garden City Community College says the school continues its lack of transparency about his death. 

Nineteen-year-old Braeden Bradforth died of exertional heat stroke last August after a grueling conditioning practice where players were denied water. 

The Jersey Shore teen died just two days after arriving in Garden City. 

Credit Courtesy / The Bradforth family
Braeden Bradforth in is Neptune High School football jersey.

The family’s lawyer, Jill Greene, asked for surveillance video from the night Bradforth died.  But, she says, the college told her it’s been recorded over. 

“A child died on your premises. Wouldn’t it behoove you to get that footage and make sure that it’s kept in a safe place.”

The college says it only keeps exterior video for 14 days. 

Garden City Community College conducted an internal review of Bradforth’s death but has not made it public and has denied KCUR’s open records request.

Sam grew up in Overland Park and was educated at the University of Kansas. After working in Philadelphia where he covered organized crime, politics and political corruption he moved on to TV news management jobs in Minneapolis and St. Louis. Sam came home in 2013 and covered health care and education at KCPT. He came to work at KCUR in 2014. Sam has a national news and documentary Emmy for an investigation into the federal Bureau of Prisons and how it puts unescorted inmates on Grayhound and Trailways buses to move them to different prisons. Sam has one son and is pretty good in the kitchen.