Joplin Globe (Hometown Paper of Coach Jeff Sims’ New School, Missouri Southern State University): ‘Answers Needed From Garden City in Braeden Bradforth Death’
Principal of Ireland’s Newpark School Threatens Broadsheet News Site Over Reference to the New George Gibney eBook
March 1, 2019Jeff Sims Email Stating ‘Absolutely I Will Help in Any Way’ Contradicts Garden City Community College’s Stonewalling in Braeden Bradforth Football Conditioning Death
March 4, 2019by Irvin Muchnick
“We are calling upon [Garden City Community College] officials to release the results of its own internal review into just what happened during and after the football practice that preceded [Braeden] Bradforth’s death. And because Jeff Sims — then the coach at Garden City — is now the coach at Missouri Southern State University, we also think a full accounting is warranted for Southwest Missouri.”
So states the Joplin Globe in a no-nonsense editorial today. The link is https://www.joplinglobe.com/opinion/our-view-answers-needed-from-garden-city/article_140a5463-b15d-532b-8164-32298da7b3b2.html.
This intervention is the strongest sign yet of local demands for accountability not only at GCCC in Kansas, where Coach Sims presided over the football program that killed Bradforth in an inexcusable exertional heat stroke episode last August, but also at Missouri Southern State, which has not explained how the role of Sims in the death got investigated before he was hired there.
The Joplin Globe wisely notes the advocacy for transparency by Vin Gopal, a state senator from Bradforth’s New Jersey, which included a request for an investigation by Kansas attorney general Derek Schmidt. The Globe concludes:
“Regrettably, the Kansas attorney general has said he does not have authority to intervene, which leaves the GCCC internal review as the only report so far of what happened.
The Globe has asked for the internal review, but has been denied.
Other media in Kansas have asked for it, but been denied.
Bradforth’s family has asked for it, but been denied.
It has been seven months since Braeden died.
Answers are needed.”
Last November and December, this reporter repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to get answers on the Sims hire from Missouri Southern State officials, including president Alan D. Marble and members of the state university board of governors.
==========
DEATH OF BRAEDEN BRADFORTH — CHRONOLOGICAL HEADLINE LINKS