p2pnet news | Games:- “I arrived home at 2:30 pm went to see where the boys were and only found 2 playing upstairs,” says a memorial post on GASP (games adolescents shouldn’t play).

It goes on:

Jesse was not there, I sent his cousin to find him and started downstairs myself. The horror of what I found will never leave me.

My son, my pride and joy, the child I gave birth to and worried every day of his life was strangled by the cord from his computer.”

Jesse was from Penetang in Ontario, Canada, and he died playing the deadly “blackout game,” “pass out game,” “scarf game,” or “space monkey”.

He was only 12 and at least two sites have been created to draw attention to the dangers kids who play it risk, including brain damage and death.

Researchers at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say Space Monkey is responsible for the deaths of at least 82 children and in their report, which deals with only US figures, say children as young as six play it by deliberately strangling themselves, or getting a friend to do it for them.

The idea is to achieve a, ” brief euphoric state caused by cerebral hypoxia”.

The CDC researchers say they used news media reports to estimate the incidence of deaths from the choking game, identifying 82 probable choking-game deaths involving children aged 6-19 during 1995-2007.

“Seventy-one (86.6%) of the decedents were male, and the mean age was 13.3 years,” it says, going on to describe two cases:

Case 1.
In February 2006, an adolescent boy aged 13 years came home from school in a good mood and had dinner with his family. He then went to his bedroom to do his homework. Approximately 1 hour later, his mother went to check on him and discovered him slumped in a corner with a belt around his neck. His face was blue. The mother began cardiopulmonary resuscitation while one of the other children called an ambulance. The boy died at a local hospital 1 hour later. No suicide note was found. The county medical examiner ruled that the death resulted from accidental asphyxiation by hanging. In the weeks following his death, multiple teens told the director of a local counseling agency that the choking game had been played at local parties.

Case 2.
In April 2005, an adolescent girl aged 13 years was found dead, hanging from a belt and shoelace made into a noose on the door of her bedroom closet, after her brother went to her room to see why she had not come down for breakfast. No suicide note was found. The medical examiner determined that the teen had died at 9:30 p.m. the previous night. After the teen’s death, the family learned that the girl had confided in a cousin that she recently had played the choking game in the locker room at school and that a group of girls at her school had been suspended for playing the choking game.

The report goes on:

The earliest choking-game death was identified as occurring in 1995. Three or fewer deaths occurred annually during 1995-2004; however, 22 deaths occurred in 2005, 35 in 2006, and nine in 2007. Seventy-one (86.6%) of the 82 decedents were male, and the age range of decedents was 6-19 years, with a mean age of 13.3 years (standard deviation = 2.1) and a median age of 13 years. Age distribution of the 82 choking-game decedents during 1995-2007 differed from that of the 5,101 youths aged 6-19 years whose deaths were attributed to suicide by hanging/suffocation during 1999-2005.

Of 70 deaths with detailed information, 67 (95.7%) occurred while the children were alone, and, “Among the 42 deaths for which sufficient detail was reported, 39 (92.9%) parents of decedents said they were not aware of the choking game until the death of their child”.

“The Choking Game is becoming increasingly popular and increasingly dangerous as children take it on as a solo venture,” warns Choking Game.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Their report – Unintentional Strangulation Deaths from the “Choking Game” Among Youths Aged 6–19 Years — United States, 1995–2007, February 15, 2007

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under Games, Off Topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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