Sonia Gonzalez hopes the wrongful death lawsuit she plans to file against Springfield will spare other parents from experiencing the agony she went through after her son collapsed while playing high school basketball.
“I don’t want any other mother to go through and feel what I’m going through,” said Gonzalez, 38, whose 18-year-old boy, George Cruz, died after playing basketball at Putnam Vocational Technical High School in Springfield in 2008. “My heart is broken.”
Cruz was running drills during a junior varsity tryout when he collapsed.A student called 911 and told the dispatcher that Cruz possibly had a seizure and was on the ground “gasping for air,” according to the 911 transcript from Dec. 5, 2008. “We are holding his head up, um, we have cold air on him, um, cold towel 
on his head, his feet are up,” the student told the dispatcher.
By the time EMTs arrived, Cruz was not breathing and had no pulse, said Gonzalez’s attorney, Max Borten, citing a report written by responding EMTs. At the hospital, he was pronounced dead, having suffered sudden cardiac arrest due to complications of a congenital heart abnormality.
Borten informed the city of Springfield on Sept. 8 that he plans to file a $3 million wrongful death lawsuit claiming the city was negligent when it failed to have staff trained in CPR the night Cruz collapsed.
The school policy at the time read that at least one CPR-trained person per 300 students should be available “in each school at all times that pupils are in the school or on the school ground,” according to a copy of the policy provided to the Herald.
Based on their depositions of 13 school employees, including teachers and administrators, there was no one on school grounds that night who was trained in CPR, Gonzalez’s lawyers say.
Gonzalez’s lawyers do not believe there was any requirement at the time that coaches be CPR trained.
Azell Murphy Cavaan, a spokeswoman for Springfield schools, said a new policy is in place this fall that requires all high school coaches to be CPR certified.
Gonzalez also has filed a lawsuit against several doctors who treated Cruz, claiming they failed to diagnose his condition when they cleared him to compete in sports. The case was filed in 2009 in Hampden Superior Court and passed a medical malpractice tribunal in April. A trial date has not been set.
Gonzalez, who has five living children, said Cruz wanted to attend Springfield College and dreamed of being a famous basketball player. “He was . . . such a lovely person,” she said, “who had so many goals in his life.”