Teen's Death in 'Choking Game' Focuses Attention on Dangerous Practice

Since March 2005, a 9-year-old girl in North Dakota, a 13-year-old boy in Paradise, Calif., and a 13-year-old boy in Appleton, Wis., have died while playing the choking game. On Feb. 7, an 11-year-old boy in White House, Tenn., died after playing the game in his bedroom with a Cub Scout kerchief, and a 13-year-old boy is believed to have died of the game last month in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. On Friday, a spokeswoman for West Virginia University said a student playing the choking game apparently had hanged himself by accident in his dorm room.

After a 14-year-old boy died Feb. 24 in Whitefield, N.H., the state's chief medical examiner, Thomas A. Andrew, issued a public health alert. Web sites such as http://www.deadlygameschildrenplay.com and http://www.stop-the-choking-game.com have sprung up with memorials to the victims and advice for parents.

Some who lost their children, such as the mother of Kyle McCarthy, 13, have also spoken out.

"Kyle was just a wonderful, wonderful little boy. He was kind of like Beaver Cleaver," said Susan McCarthy, 45, a medical office employee.

McCarthy, of Appleton, was returning home from picking apples with her mother and two of her children Oct. 9 when she saw flashing red lights on her street. Then, she said, she realized it was her house. That afternoon, after going deer hunting with his father, Kyle McCarthy had accidentally hanged himself in their basement. Later, the family found belts, Hawaiian leis and ropes with sophisticated knots in them that he had been experimenting with since an older boy had shown him how that summer, McCarthy said.

"Last night, we were looking through photo albums and films just to see him alive again," McCarthy said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I still believe, somehow inside, it's a dream, and it didn't really happen. But of course, it's not a dream."

Westerfield, who co-authored a survey of the research into autoerotic asphyxiation, said experimenting with suffocation falls on a continuum of risky behaviors from simply passing out to using ligatures while masturbating. But there is scant research about the practice, particularly where it intersects with sexuality, he said.

Andrew P. Jenkins, a professor at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., estimates that the phenomenon might account for as many as 31 percent of all adolescent hangings. Given its shocking nature, however, the deaths are probably underreported as suicides, and families, police and emergency medical workers have been known -- purposely or inadvertently -- to sanitize the scene, Jenkins says.

Bill Bowen, the Frederick County teenager, was born in Wheaton and was known as a bright young man who belonged to several clubs at school and loved to ride an all-terrain vehicle, his minister and friends said.

"When I first met him, he was telling me about a rocket he was building," said 10th-grader Sean Cummings, 16, of Monrovia.

Jack Fagan, 15, a ninth-grader, said he used to pal around with Bowen in sixth grade. "He had this club on his own, and it was basically about 'Star Trek.' They had these little badges, and how many badges you had told you how high up you were in the group," he said, adding that he had lost touch with Bowen but still saw him from time to time. "He didn't seem like the kind of kid to do this."

But several students at Urbana High said playing the choking game, especially in its less extreme form without ligatures, has been common.

Melissa Pritchard, 17, a senior at Urbana, said she attended a party last year at which girls and boys filmed one another passing out.

"It was just because it was funny," said Pritchard, of Monrovia. "Now that I look back, it's not funny."