A 61-year-old youth sports umpire died over the weekend from heat stroke after passing out during a softball tournament in Sumter County, South Carolina.
Mitchell Huggins was officiating a game Saturday at Patriot Park when he collapsed, his sister told NBC affiliate WIS of Columbia. According to Weather Underground, temperatures had climbed as high as 91 degrees on Saturday.
Huggins was rushed to the hospital, where he regained consciousness before passing out again, according to the news station. He was later pronounced dead.
The Sumter County Coroner’s Office confirmed that his cause of death has been preliminarily ruled as heat stroke.
On Wednesday, a woman died from heat exhaustion after being outside in extreme temperatures, the Anderson County Office of the Coroner said in a news release. It was the county’s first heat-related death of the year.
The Midwest and eastern United States have been plagued by a record-breaking and dangerous heat wave that has caused roads to buckle and put a strain on power grids in major cities.
Earlier this week, more than 100 people were treated for heat-related illness at two outdoor graduation ceremonies in New Jersey.
In Washington, D.C., dozens of people passed out or became sick from heat exhaustion at a Stray Kids concert at Nationals Park, NBC Washington reported.
“People were in the barricade area throwing up over the barricades,” one attendee said. “We saw security running from scene to scene. Probably like where we were at, 20 people that had to call for medics.”
According to NBC Washington, Stray Kids, a K-pop band, paused their concert twice so fans could get medical attention and shared their own water bottles with fans.
