SUGAR LAND, Texas—The parents of a Texas A&M junior who died of bacterial meningitis say they plan to push the Legislature to require that all students at Texas universities be vaccinated against the fast-moving infection.
Nicolis "Nico" Williams, a 20-year-old economics major from Sugar Land, complained about flulike symptoms on Monday.
His father says the next day he went to a clinic on campus.
"He went to the doctor at the school," said Greg Williams. "He went Tuesday morning and they treated it like flu-symptoms."
Nico Williams went back to the house he rented off campus and took a nap. When he woke up, his condition had changed drastically.
"His roommate says he wasn’t coherent at all," Williams said. "He sat on the couch and fell off. They knew at that point that something was seriously wrong."
His roommate called 911 and Nico was rushed to the hospital. A few hours later he was brain dead.
Friends and family gathered around the 20-year-old until he died on Friday.
"A lot of the students were in a circle around his bed and praying for him," recalled Greg Williams. "They prayed for hours at a time. We knew that if God intended for Nicolis to come back to us he would have."
State law that requires the meningococcal vaccine for first-time, on-campus college students did not apply to Nico, because he lived off-campus.
Greg Williams doesn’t understand why all students aren’t required to get vaccinated.
"Those same students interact with each other," he said. "It doesn’t make any sense to me to leave out a significant portion of your student population by not requiring them to be vaccinated as well."
He said he plans to fight to get the law expanded to include all Texas students, no matter where they live.
"It’s just very frustrating to know that this could have been prevented," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
