LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Six years later and Peace Ifeacho still has trouble sleeping through the night.
“I have night terrors where I’m screaming. I have nightmares where I’m up and I’m running through the house,” she told Alan Cutler during his radio show on ESPN Radio 1300 & 92.5.
Ifeacho’s son, Star, passed away inside the gym at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 2017 when his heart gave out. His mother claims an AED or defibrillator was nowhere to be found, and he wasn’t given proper care.
“(A coach) was kneeling beside my son holding his hand. That is not part of an emergency action plan,” Ifeacho stated.
The Fayette County School district claimed that CPR was performed, but legal documents indicate the defibrillator was not in its usual spot. Several months after Star’s death, his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit. That case is still ongoing.
Peace came to the airwaves to ask the state to consider a law that would require all schools to be equipped with AED machines and to train everyone in the building on their proper use.
“What can we do? Make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she said.
One of Star’s closest friends, Michael Corio, also appeared on the show and said he’d have been more than happy to learn how to use the AED as a student. He also said the experience matured him.
“It added a lot of years,” he told Cutler before noting that religion, since the traumatic episode, has become a bigger part of this life.
