Former Bucs wide receiver Mike Williams, 36, is apparently still alive despite reports that he died Tuesday after sustaining injuries in a construction accident.
The Buffalo native was badly injured last month in Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida. His father set up a GoFundMe page and explained that a steel beam fell on Williams’ head at a construction site and caused a “massive head injury.”
He suffered “swelling in his brain and swelling on his spinal cord that was ruptured,” the campaign states, the New York Post reports. “These injuries resulted in complete paralysis in his right arm as well as his lower body from the waist down.”
According to the campaign, Williams never regained consciousness after he passed out on Sept. 1. He was induced into a coma on Sept. 3 and doctors had a “scheduled time to try to wake him up in 3 days.”
Multiple outlets reported that Williams died Tuesday from his injuries but his agent confirmed to 7 News WKBW in Buffalo that he is still alive. Williams was to be taken off life support, but that has not yet happened.
Spectrum News 1 in Buffalo was the first to report that Williams died, but according to the Tampa Bay Times, he is indeed on life support.
“They were waiting on me and [his daughter]. We’re here and still trying to figure it out,” Tierney Lyle, the mother of Williams’ 8-year-old daughter, said, according to the Times.
“He was asleep when we went in there and he woke up when he heard our voices and his daughter’s voice,” Lyle said. “And he looked around, and he blinked and he was crying but he can’t move.”
