ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) — Patrick Jack has waited six months for answers about the death of his only son, Lamar.

He says investigators aren't talking to him anymore.

"We haven't heard anything in a long time," Jack said recently. "We are doing the best we can to take this a day at a time."

Lamar Jack, an Anderson University basketball player, was in the middle of preseason drills on a campus basketball court last fall when he began complaining of cramping and vision problems.

He sat on the bleachers to rest for a bit, but soon collapsed.

He was rushed to AnMed Health Medical Center's emergency room with a temperature of 103. Records indicate that he regained consciousness at some points during his hospital stay. At least once, he was able to tell doctors and nurses where he was and who he was. But other times, if he was conscious at all, he was confused.

Lamar Jack never recovered from that Sept. 30 collapse on the basketball court. A record in the county coroner's file says Jack "followed a steady, downhill course to death" on Oct. 4. He was 19. Toxicology and laboratory tests later revealed that Jack had ingested JWH-018, a chemical used to make synthetic drugs.

Those synthetic drugs are sold in tiny packets and vials under a variety of brand names including Vanilla Sky, Red Dawn and Ivory Wave. They are sometimes called synthetic marijuana or falsely labeled as herbal incense.

Before Jack's death, they were visible on store counters across Anderson County and South Carolina, available for $20 or less.

Jack's parents asked Anderson police before their son died to analyze an "herbal incense" product that was found in his car.

They hoped that analysis would give them some answers, would save their son's life.

Six months after his death, a different agency is handling the investigation, and Jack's parents still don't know if the "herbal incense" in their son's car contained the chemical that helped kill him.

"I've asked about the analysis," Patrick Jack said. "They have given us the answer, 'We can't tell you what was found.'"

In October 2011, the Anderson Police Department initially told the public that the department had sent the product found in Lamar Jack's car to be analyzed by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

The Independent Mail discovered weeks later, in mid-November, that the product, called Tease, had not been sent to the state's law enforcement agency or to any other laboratory for analysis.

Days later, Police Chief Martin Brown said in an interview with the newspaper that the product had been sent to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for analysis.

Brown did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has said that Jack's case remains under investigation and that the agency will not comment further.

The results of the "herbal incense" analysis, if it has been completed, have not been made public.

"We haven't heard anything else," Patrick Jack said.

"God has given us a peace — my wife and I — so that we are not tossing and turning at night," he said. "But there is so much that we don't know, that we may never know. What we do know is that we had a good son."