Paralyzed youth football player who settled with Pop Warner dies at 18

Donnovan Hill, the paralyzed former youth football player who reached an unprecedented seven-figure settlement with Pop Warner football, died Wednesday after complications during surgery related to managing his health, his mother, Crystal Dixon, said (via ESPN.com).

He was 18.

In 2011, Hill was paralyzed while making a tackle in a Pop Warner game in Lakewood, Calif. His injury and subsequent lawsuit, in which he claimed his coaches promoted a head-first tackling technique, ignited the discussion over player safety in youth football in general and the vulnerability families of severely injured players face.

Hill was undergoing a routine procedure Tuesday at a Los Angeles-area hospital, to clean out a skin graft related to pressure sores from his paralysis, but following complications during surgery he fell into a coma. He died at 4:35 a.m. PT Wednesday.

Dixon said a doctor accidentally cut an artery during the procedure. According to ESPN, representatives of the hospital were unavailable to confirm the circumstances of Hill's death.