South African rugby player killed by Hawaii police had degenerative brain illness, CTE
A Black man who grew up playing professional rugby in South Africa and whose shooting by police a few months after he moved to Hawaii prompted allegations of racial discrimination, suffered from a degenerative brain disease often found in American football stars subjected to repeated head trauma.
The finding could help explain Lindani Myeni’s (MY-en-ee) bizarre behavior that led to the deadly 2021 confrontation with Honolulu officers, experts said, and offers another layer of detail about the shooting that gained international attention during calls for police reform nationwide.
An addendum to Myeni’s autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press shows his brain tissue was sent to the Boston University CTE Center, which found the 29-year-old father of two suffered from Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Commonly known as CTE, the disease can only be diagnosed posthumously.
Stage 4 is the most severe level and experts say it’s alarming for someone as young as Myeni to have such a critical case of CTE.
No previous signs of illness
Myeni’s wife, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging police shot him because he was Black, said she was shocked to learn of the CTE diagnosis.
“I had no clue. He had no clue,” Lindsay Myeni said from Richard’s Bay, South Africa, where she now lives. “So it was kind of devastating because it felt like … someone was telling me like, hey, he died from racism at 29, but he was going to be killed from his favorite sport at 50 or 51 anyway.”
Police were called to a Honolulu home because an upset occupant complained a stranger had entered uninvited. He said “I have videos of you,” claimed a cat there was his and made other strange comments, according to Honolulu’s prosecuting attorney who decided not to pursue charges against any of the officers.
Police officials have said officers weren’t reacting to his race, but rather his behavior, which put officers’ lives in jeopardy. Prosecutors found that deadly force was justified because Myeni physically attacked officers, leaving one with a concussion.
The civil trial is scheduled for later this year.
He had been emotional earlier that day about some family issues and the couple had visited numerous spiritual sites around the island of Oahu, Lindsay Myeni said, but he showed no signs of CTE symptoms. Those include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression and depression.
“I tried to really think like objectively, OK, during COVID, he could have been depressed or had mood swings maybe, but didn’t we all?” she said.
Myeni started playing rugby at around age 13, and by 19 had even played professionally with the Border Bulldogs in South Africa, his wife said. He also played some rugby in Colorado and Florida, she said. She was aware of him only having two or three concussions.
Doctor’s verdict
Dr. Masahiko Kobayashi, the Honolulu medical examiner who conducted Myeni’s autopsy and concluded he died from multiple gunshot wounds, said he suspected CTE after hearing about Myeni’s behavior and his past involvement with contact sports.
“The case of Mr. Myeni was really simple when I just determined the cause and manner of death. But the circumstances were very complex, and the public was greatly impacted by this case,” he said.
Kobayashi said he hoped the CTE finding might provide a clearer picture of what led to Myeni’s death.
But CTE doesn’t help Lindsay Myeni understand what happened that April 14, 2021 night.
“To me, it still doesn’t answer any questions as to why you would shoot him,” she said.
Myeni’s behavior sounded like “classic symptoms” related to CTE, “confusion, disorientation, acting out in a very different way,” said Paul Anderson, a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri who represents families of athletes with brain injuries, but is not involved in the Myeni case.
That Myeni was only 29 years old and had stage three CTE is significant, said Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, a CTE expert and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “This is an example of pretty severe CTE for someone that age,” he said.
The youngest case of stage three CTE that that has been diagnosed in medical literature was Aaron Hernandez, 27, Daneshvar said.
The former New England Patriots football star killed himself in 2017 in the prison cell where he was serving a life-without-parole sentence for murder.
While people with CTE tend to have problems with memory, thinking, impulsivity and paranoia, there could be other factors that explain behavior, Daneshvar said.
Officer body camera videos showed Myeni punching responding officers, leaving one with facial fractures and a concussion. Myeni continued punching an officer even after he was shot once in the chest, Alm said.
Bridget Morgan-Bickerton, a Honolulu attorney representing Myeni’s wife, said he wasn’t aggressive, “until he was subjected to unjustified aggression being yelled at, at gunpoint, in the dark, to ‘get on the ground’ with no announcement of who was asking.”
Three months before the shooting, the Myenis moved to Hawaii, where Lindsay Myeni grew up, believing it would be safer to raise their two Black children here than in another U.S. state.
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