This is how DeSoto Central High School (Mississippi) football coach Chris Purnell described Bennie (Buster) Abram in 2005: "Bennie is a quiet leader. He will lead by example and he'll work hard, but he doesn't do a whole lot of talking. He's certainly not afraid of anybody."

Abram’s hard work was evident when he joined the University of Mississippi football team as a walk-on defensive back. However, Abram died on the first day of spring practice at an Ole Miss practice field on Feb. 19, 2010.

An autopsy determined that the Southaven, Miss., native’s death was caused by complications from sickle cell trait with exertion and a contributing factor of cardiomegaly (inflammation of the heart). The sickle cell trait has been tied to more than 20 college athletes’ deaths in recent years.

Now, attorneys from the Houston office of The Lanier Law Firm and Jackson, Miss.-based Coxwell & Associates, PLLC, are representing the Abram family in a lawsuit against Ole Miss head football coach Houston Nutt, the NCAA, the university and others based on claims that the defendants ignored Abram’s sickle cell condition.

“Buster’s death is a tragedy that should have been prevented,” says The Lanier Law Firm’s Gene Egdorf. “Every sickle cell expert in the world will tell you that the only way this trait can cause a student-athlete’s death is when they are put through overly strenuous workouts like the one Bennie went through before he died.”

Egdorf represented the family of former Rice University student-athlete Dale R. Lloyd II in a landmark settlement with the NCAA last year that resulted in new policies requiring sickle cell testing for all college athletes.