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The Choking Game: An Edmonton mother was looking for answers as to why her nine year-old son would have committed suicide. She discovered and disturbing and deadly social phenomenon called the choking game.
Aired March 15,
2006 at 9pm
on CBC-TV

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REPORTER: Linden MacIntyre
PRODUCER: Morris Karp

WEB EXCLUSIVE: IS YOUR CHILD AT RISK?
Is your child playing the "choking game"? Read the warning signs. MORE
THE CHOKING GAME

When Amanda Bryant of Alberta found her nine year-old-son, Kalib, in his bedroom with a belt around his neck eleven days before Christmas, it changed her life and the lives of her family forever. Kalib's death was initially ruled a suicide. Amanda found it hard to believe that her outgoing, happy child would commit suicide. She began a search for answers.

Other unexplained deaths in young boys
That search lead her to another mother whose son had died in an eerily similar way. In California, Sarah Pacatte's 13-year-old son Gabriel was found by his twin, Samuel on May 6, 2005.

Samuel Pacette
Samuel Mordecai played "the choking game" with his brother who later died because of it.
"I saw Gabe with the rope around his neck and a math book on his lap. He was just sitting on the ground. And so I thought he was just joking and so I said Gabe, knock it off, or like quit messing around...I looked over at him and he hadn't moved. I said his name a couple of times."

Gabriel was rushed to hospital where he died 15 hours later. He had died playing "the choking game". Sam remembers playing the game with his brother. He recalls that they would bend down and hyperventilate and one of them would grab their chest, and then wrap their arms around their neck, cutting off the blood and oxygen supply to the brain and causing a euphoric rush, a momentary physical thrill.

The two mothers, one in Alberta, the other in California, began an e-mail correspondence on the internet they saw hundreds of other stories about children (mostly boys between the ages of 9 and 14) whose sudden, unexplained deaths could have been caused by the choking game. The game is addictive and becomes more dangerous when played alone by a child using either shoelaces, a rope, a dog leash, a bedsheet or belt.

Just as Amanda Bryant and Sarah Pacatte were beginning to awake to the danger of the game, some medical authorities were also re-assessing cases that they had first ruled suicides.

The first medical study
Dr. Macnab
Dr. Andrew Macnab, distinguished scholar, Peter Wall Institute, published the first study about "the choking game" and suspects that it's more common than we think.
In 1997, Vancouver pediatrician Dr. Andrew Macnab learned of a young boy who had been playing with a cloth towel dispenser with two friends in the school bathroom. The boy wound the cloth towel around his neck, choking off the air and blood supply to his brain. He survived the incident and told Dr. Macnab that they did this for fun.

Dr. Macnab began looking into cases of similar incidents involving children that had not been so lucky. Dr. Macnab's ensuing study, the first to look at the choking game, was published in Injury Prevention in September 2001.

Dr. Macnab thinks "the choking game" is a bigger problem than anyone wants to acknowledge. "I suspect it's commoner than is widely recognized, simply because we can see the top of the iceberg and by nature icebergs are a lot bigger under the surface than they are from the piece that's visible."

Kalib Shalapay's death was eventually ruled "undetermined" by Alberta's chief medical examiner. But, for his mother there is no doubt as to the cause.

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