[imagesource:twitter/goodmorningamerica]

20-year-old Grant Brace died on 31 August 2020 during a cruel wrestling training session at his college.

Gruelling footage of the tragic day shows his desperate attempts to find water just an hour before he collapsed and suffered a deadly heatstroke.

Last week, the family of the Kentucky college athlete reached a $14 million settlement with the University of the Cumberlands, as the school’s coaches were very much to blame for not providing the dehydrating boy with water.

Brace’s parents broke down in tears during an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America as they recounted seeing a video of their son trying to find water after two coaches denied him the life-saving water.

“Ultimately, it killed him,” Jackie Brace said in the segment aired on Sunday. “… [i]t’s so painful to think that he was alone.”

Brace was seen hopelessly trying to open a locked door in the wrestling team building before he was found unconscious near a non-functioning water fountain around 45 minutes later, notes The Independent.

“He was on all fours and he had dug his hand in the dirt,” Brace’s dad Kyle Brace also said. “He had fistfuls of dirt.”

Consider that a trigger warning:

EXCLUSIVE: Parents of college wrestler who died of heat stroke break their silence after reaching $14 million settlement with school. @trevorlault reports. pic.twitter.com/wdP8AN1fVM

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 20, 2023

Brace’s death from an “exertional heatstroke”, per the autopsy, was wholly preventable:

The Braces claimed in their lawsuit that the coaches forced the team to sprint multiple times up and down a steep hill dubbed “punishment hill” in 84-degree weather.

The then-coach threatened to kick Brace off the wrestling team, so he ran up the hill again and was later heard saying, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore,” the lawsuit said.