CORBIN, Ky. — A second grader died after a freak accident happened while he was playing basketball outside his house in Corbin, Kentucky Monday night.
Eli Hill, 8, died after the basketball backboard fell off the pole it was mounted on and hit him in the chest.
According to police, the boy went to get something to stand on in order to dunk the ball in the hoop, according to WKYT. The Fayette County coroner’s office said the boy died from blunt force trauma to his chest when the backboard hit him, according to the news outlet. He was taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries.
Ashley Hill, Eli’s mother, told the newspaper that she was inside her house cooking dinner when the incident happened. Eli’s chest was crushed.
“I always knew that Eli was going to do something special with his life, but I didn’t know this was it,” Hill said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Hill told the newspaper that the family had decided to donate her son’s organs.
“Eli had a heart of gold and somebody else has that heart now,” Hill said Tuesday. “We know it was somebody else’s answered prayer this morning to get that call.”
