South African rugby player killed by Hawaii police had CTE

AP

HONOLULU — A Black former professional rugby player from South Africa shot by police months after moving to Hawaii suffered from a degenerative brain disease often found in American football players and other athletes subjected to repeated head trauma, autopsy results show.

The finding could help explain Lindani Myeni’s bizarre behavior before the deadly 2021 confrontation with Honolulu officers. It also offers another layer of detail about a shooting that gained international attention during heightened calls for police reform following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

An addendum to Myeni’s autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press shows his brain tissue was sent to the Boston University CTE Center, which found the 29-year-old father of two suffered from stage three chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Commonly known as CTE, the disease can only be diagnosed posthumously.

Stage four is the most severe level and experts say it’s alarming for someone as young as Myeni to have such a critical case of CTE.

Lindsay Myeni, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging police shot her husband because he was Black, said she was shocked to learn of the CTE diagnosis.

“I had no clue. He had no clue,” she said from Richard’s Bay, South Africa, where she now lives. “So it was kind of devastating because it felt like … someone was telling me like, hey, he died from racism at 29, but he was going to be killed from his favorite sport at 50 or 51 anyway.”

Police were called to a Honolulu home about a stranger who had entered uninvited. He said, “I have videos of you,” claimed a cat at the home was his and made other strange comments, according to Honolulu’s prosecuting attorney, who decided not to pursue charges against any of the officers.

Police officials have said officers weren’t reacting to his race, but rather his behavior, which put officers’ lives in jeopardy. Prosecutors found that deadly force was justified because Myeni physically attacked officers, leaving one with a concussion.

He had been emotional earlier that day about family issues and the couple had visited numerous spiritual sites around the island of Oahu, Lindsay Myeni said, but he showed no signs of CTE symptoms. Those include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression and depression.