Every attack, including asthma, has the potential to be fatal. That is made abundantly clear by the untimely and terrible passing of 12-year-old Ryan Gibbons.

Ryan was a lively young man who enjoyed riding motorcycles and going on hikes in the woods, but he would soon die from a deadly error.

He had an asthma attack at school back in 2012. At the start of the episode, he could have easily used his inhaler, but the life-saving tool had been stolen.

Ryan Gibbons, a 12-year-old seventh-grader, attended school on October 9 as usual. But he would not go home that day.

While playing soccer at school, Ryan had an asthma attack and couldn’t get to his rescue medication, which was locked in the school office.

The boy in pain needed his inhaler to clear his airways so he could breathe. However, spare inhalers were frequently taken away from Ryan because it was the school’s policy to keep the inhalers locked in the principal’s office.

During the attack, Ryan’s friends attempted to carry him to the office, but they were unable to reach the inhaler in time. Ryan fainted and was never brought back to life.

A whole country was rocked by the tragedy that happened at the Elgin Country School in Ontario, Canada.

An investigation revealed that, despite his mother’s repeated attempts and a doctor’s note, Ryan’s school did not permit him to keep his puffer with him.

In order to get around this regulation, Ryan would frequently bring an extra inhaler to school, according to his mother Sandra Gibbons.

Keeping the inhaler locked in a room is risky, and asthma attacks aren’t always predictable. However, the school continued to confiscate Ryan’s extra inhaler.

According to Ryan’s mother, she received multiple calls from the school requesting that she pick up an inhaler that Ryan had brought to class.

He was not permitted to take it home. Sandra Gibbons told CBC, “You would give him an inhaler, but he would get caught with the inhaler and then it would be taken away.”

Sandra Gibbons, the mother of Ryan, a child with asthma, started a petition to force Ontario schools to adopt standardized asthma management plans. She urged all three parties to pass a private member’s bill from Progressive Conservative Jeff Yurek.

The result was Ryan’s Law, Bill 135, which forces schools to allow children to carry their inhalers in their pocket or backpack with a doctor’s note. The Asthma Society applauded the bill’s passage, stating that children with asthma need ready access to potentially life-saving medications while at school. Fatal asthma is a significant problem, with over 10 Americans dying daily from the disease.