(NEWSER) – Hours before he was supposed to start his first day of his senior year of high school in Georgia, 17-year-old Zyrees Oliver collapsed and was rushed to the hospital in a helicopter.
Gatorade bottles line the a bench at a football stadium in Charlotte, N.C., on Aug. 8, 2014.
(Photo: Bob Leverone, AP)
He’d consumed two gallons of water and two gallons of Gatorade after football practice, and was so over-hydrated that his body’s electrolytes were thrown off-balance, causing massive swelling in his brain. Five days later, on Sunday night, he was taken off the ventilator.
He’s already in heaven, his aunt, Nina Oliver told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution that night. He was pronounced dead hours later. It’s incomprehensible, she said. We had a healthy, beautiful, vibrant young man.
Zyrees Oliver excelled at both football and track, and boasted a 3.8 GPA, according to his family and friends. His classmates wore team colors and formed a prayer circle at school on Friday, while grief counselors were dispatched Monday.
While death from over-hydration is very rare, it does happen; one woman died in 2007 after drinking two gallons of water in a radio contest, reports CBS News; earlier this year, a couple was charged after their 5-year-old daughter died from drinking too much grape soda. (Gatorade, meanwhile, helped this girl survive.)