NFHS Personal Foul Question

[Eastshire]

I'm not a football official so I'm not sure about what I saw at the game tonight.

NFHS rules: 2/10 at A30. A12 muffs the snap and falls on it at the A23. He is then hit by 2 B players. A flag is thrown for personal foul - late hit. The foul is enforced 15 yards from the end of the run to the A38. This was short of the line to gain so the next play was 2/2 at the A38.

My question is shouldn't this have been a dead ball foul with the next play 3/2 from the A38? By definition, doesn't a late hit foul happen during a dead ball?

(As an aside, there was a coach's conference on the enforcement for A which took 5-10 minutes to convince A's coach they didn't get an automatic first down.)