Jacqueline Towns, the mother of Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, has passed away after a month-long battle with the coronavirus.
The NBA baller took to social media last month to open up about his mother’s condition, all while encouraging fans to take the outbreak seriously.
“I think it’s important that everyone understands the severity of what’s happening in the world right now with the coronavirus, and I think where my life is right now could help, so I decided to do this video and give you an update of where I’m at.”
As he continued, Towns revealed that both his mother and father fell ill the week before his video, and almost immediately, encouraged the two to seek medical treatment.
But as time passed, Towns said his mother’s condition just kept getting worse.
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“She just wasn’t getting better. Her fever was never cutting from 103, maybe go down to 101.9 with meds, and then immediately spike back up during the night,” he revealed, adding that she had been placed in a medically induced coma.
“This disease needs to not be taken lightly,” he said. “Please protect your families, your loved ones, your friends, yourself. Practice social distancing. Please don’t be in places with a lot of people; it just heightens your chances of getting this disease and this disease … it’s deadly. It’s deadly. And we’re going to keep fighting on my side, me and my family, we’re going to keep fighting this. We’re going to beat it; we’re going to win.”
But now, just weeks after Towns’ PSA, the Timberwolves organization has revealed that Mrs. Towns has succumbed to the virus.
“Jackie, as she was affectionately known among family and friends, had been battling the virus for more than a month when she succumbed on April 13th. Jackie was many things to many people—a wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend,” the team announced on Monday. “The matriarch of the Towns family, she was an incredible source of strength; a fiery, caring, and extremely loving person, who touched everyone she met.”
More than 576,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the United States, with over 23,068 deaths.
