Columbia, Mo. ? From the frantic moments after 19-year-old Aaron O’Neal’s death in July to the preseason practices leading to their first game next week, Missouri football players publicly have stood united in support of the program.

But Boone County medical examiner Valerie Rao – who interviewed 10 of O’Neal’s teammates as part of her autopsy investigation – heard a different story. According to copies of her interview notes obtained by the Associated Press through a request under Missouri’s open-records law, several players openly questioned the response by trainers and strength coaches once O’Neal showed signs of trouble.

When wide receiver Brad Ekwerekwu attempted to pour water over a sluggish O’Neal’s head, he was told by an unnamed coach “not to baby” his teammate, Ekwerekwu told Rao.

Three of the Tiger players interviewed by Rao identified Missouri sports medicine director Rex Sharp as the unnamed staff member in Rao’s autopsy report who concluded that “there was nothing that could be done” when summoned by head conditioning coach Pat Ivey to help O’Neal during the July 12 voluntary workout.

Sharp declined comment Friday, referring questions to an athletic-department spokesman. Missouri athletic director Mike Alden said the school could not discuss its specific response to O’Neal’s sudden death now that his father, Lonnie O’Neal, had filed suit against 14 university employees alleging negligence.

That suit was filed Tuesday, the same day Rao revealed O’Neal’s cause of death as viral meningitis, a rare inflammation of the tissues and infection of the fluid covering the brain that rarely is fatal.

In interviews and her autopsy report, Rao repeatedly avoided a discussion of the response by team trainers and strength coaches, who under NCAA rules were allowed to supervise the preseason session.

But her autopsy report, which included interviews with Sharp, Ivey and nine other trainers and strength coaches, pointed out what O’Neal family attorney Bob Blitz has called several serious lapses, most seriously the decision to take a stricken O’Neal from the Faurot Field locker room to the football team offices rather than University Hospital.

Both buildings are across the street from the stadium, but on opposite sides.

O’Neal – whose body by then was so limp that Ekwerekwu and strength coach Josh Stoner had trouble holding onto him – was driven to the team offices in a campus landscaping truck that Stoner had to flag down. Stoner had to prop up the head of an unconscious O’Neal, Rao reported.

The decision not to summon an ambulance immediately may have violated the university athletic department’s Emergency Action Plan, a detailed document that advises employees to call 911 “as soon as the situation is deemed an emergency situation or is life-threatening.”

O’Neal was in full cardiac arrest by the time a campus police officer and paramedics arrived at the team offices.

Defensive back Trenile Washington, a red-shirt-freshman classmate of O’Neal’s, told Rao, “It took too long for A.O. to get help.”