Football Player Loses Leg, A 17-year-old high school football player in Florida lost his right leg after his knee was injured during a game.
Leshawn Williams, a defensive lineman, went down during a play, and at first seemed to have a serious, but fairly routine, injury to his MCL (medial collateral ligament), which is an inner knee ligament.
But days after the Friday night game, surgeons were forced to remove the 6-foot, 330-pound teen's right let from above the knee.
"I don't think he's grasped it all yet. He's still recovering," said his mother, Bonita Copeland. "We're all trying to understand it," she told the Tampa Bay Times.
The high school game was stopped for nearly 30 minutes while medical workers examined Williams' leg, trying to determine if he had broken it or was suffering ligament damage, the paper said.Copeland then said it looked like damaged ligament.
"When I first looked at it, it looked like he had an MCL. Every time he lifted his knee he had pain. Then you could see the blood clot in the back of his knee."
Doctors spent the weekend trying to return circulation in the teen's leg, but were unsuccessful. They decided to amputate on Sunday night.
