"He closed his eyes and that was it:" Did a trip to the chiropractor kill an otherwise healthy 30-year-old?

OKLAHOMA (WITI) -- Linda Youngblood is haunted by the fact that her 30-year-old son went to the chiropractor and never came home. 30-year-old Jeremy Youngblood was young, vibrant and attacking life head-on when he died of a stroke at the chiropractor's office.

After the stroke, Youngblood's family tells FOX6's sister station, KFOR no one called 911. Instead, staff at the chiroprator's office called Jeremy's dad to pick him up.

KFOR reports Jeremy Youngblood was then driven to the emergency room, and then flown to Oklahoma City, where he died at a hospital.

An autopsy shows Jeremy Youngblood died as a result of acute cerebellar infarction -- due to manipulatoin of the neck, according to KFOR.

“The majority of the strokes happen in the vertebral arteries in the back. The stress on that artery at that segment where it makes that turn against that bone is most susceptible to stroke," Dr. Bill Kinsinger, an outspoken critic of chiropractic therapy tells KFOR.

Dr. Kinsinger says when a chiropractor adjusts your neck, it can cause a tear in the artery which basically tries to heal with a clot. The clot can then break off and travels until the vessels become too small and eventually can cause a stroke.

“It’s not that these strokes are happening everyday. They’re not. But they are happening and they’re usually happening to young, otherwise healthy people who should have never been injured for benefit of nothing,” Dr. Kinsinger said.

Dr. Kinsinger said it’s all about risk versus benefit.

“We can talk all day about the lack of evidence of the benefit of neck manipulations for neck pain but beyond that they use neck manipulation for things that have nothing to do with the neck. Low back pain, knee pain and all sorts of organic illnesses like ear infections in babies, colicky babies, P.M.S in women. Bee sting therapy, snake oil salesman. There’s no more to it than that," Dr. Kinsinger said.

Chris Waddell is the President of the Oklahoma Board of Chiropractic Examiners. He tells KFOR their work speaks for itself. Wadell says data doesn’t back up the idea that visits to the chiropractor can kill.

“I think if the benefits weren’t there, people wouldn’t utilize our services. They know what works and what doesn’t,” Waddell said.

Linda Youngblood's concern is the fact that she'll never see her son again.

“This is something a mother will never get over, I will never ever get over it. I cry every day. It’s with me every day. It’s never going to go away,” Linda Youngblood told KFOR.

The Oklahoma Chriopractor's Association issued a statement to FOX6's sister station, KFOR in Oklahoma City on this case.