WADING RIVER, N.Y. (AP) An overflow crowd spilled into the parking lot of a New York church at the funeral Mass for a Long Island high school football player who died during a game last week.
A funeral procession, led by police on motorcycles, brought the casket of 16-year-old Tom Cutinella to the St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Wading River on Tuesday.
Cutinella, a junior on the Shoreham-Wading River varsity football team, died after collapsing during a game last Wednesday. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death.
He was the third high school football player in the country to die in the same week.
Friends and teachers have called Cutinella an inspiration to his fellow classmates.
Many members of opposing teams attended a wake for Cutinella on Sunday and Monday.
