The mother of a “perfect” college student who died in a charity boxing match days before his 21st birthday has revealed that her son had never fought before and alleged that the bout referee and judges were seen drinking.
University of Las Vegas student Nathan Valencia, 20, died four days after appearing at an event raising money for a youth boxing club.
Although the coroner has classified Valencia’s death as a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head, his family’s attorneys have said that they will “leave no stone unturned to determine how a 20-year-old ended up in a school-sanctioned amateur fight that cost him his life.”
“I kept asking him: ‘are you going to be protected or are you going to be wearing headgear?'” Valencia’s mother, Cynthia, told CNN. “He said, ‘of course, this is for charity’.”
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“He was saying ‘mom, you know you worry too much – this is just a charity event.’ So I come to find out he was going to be the main event and I was like, ‘how did this happen?’
“But he kept telling us that this was for people who didn’t have prior boxing experience because he was never a boxer. He truly was just doing this because it was for a charity.”
Valencia’s grief-stricken mom said the youngster’s girlfriend had received a call informing her that the fight was over.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">“We have videos showing the referee was drinking, as well as the judges during the event,” the mom of Nathan Valencia told us. The UNLV student died after participating in a charity boxing match hosted by a fraternity earlier this month. <a href="https://t.co/thoZqt0VY5">pic.twitter.com/thoZqt0VY5</a></p>— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) <a href="https://twitter.com/brikeilarcnn/status/1465327101624598533?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2021</a></blockquote>
“They think Nathan suffered concussion because he had collapsed,” she said. “We rushed to the hospital.