An American football player has died a month after suffering a head-on-head collision during a college game.

Medrick Burnett Jr was playing for Alabama A&M University against Alabama State University on 26 October – the day before his birthday – when the severe injury occurred.

His sister said on his GoFundMe page that the 20-year-old linebacker had “several brain bleeds and swelling of the brain” following the collision in Birmingham, a city in the southeastern US state.

In a “last resort” to save his life, Dominece James said he’d had a craniotomy – the surgical removal of part of the skull to expose the brain.

Alabama A&M athletic department announced his death on Wednesday but later sent a retraction, saying the news had come via “an immediate family member”.

Jefferson County coroner confirmed on Friday that Burnett Jr had died on Wednesday evening.

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The freshman was from Lakewood, California, and joined Alabama A&M in the summer after starting his college career at Louisiana’s Grambling State University.