The death of a teenage football player on Long Island has raised questions as to why students were asked to carry what the police described as an approximately 400-pound, 10-foot log while participating in an off-season conditioning camp.

Joshua A. Mileto, a 16-year-old football player from Farmingville, N.Y., was performing the training exercise at Sachem East High School with four other students. The boys were hoisting the log above their heads on Thursday morning when it fell and struck Joshua, the Suffolk County Police Department said. He was pronounced dead at Stony Brook University Hospital.

“We are absolutely beyond devastated,” Joshua’s mother, Sayyida Mileto, wrote on Facebook. “We are in no way able to respond or speak to anyone at this point.”

Greg Fernandez, who lives in nearby Holtsville, N.Y., said his 17-year-old stepson, who was good friends with Joshua, “saw pretty much everything” that day.