suffocation

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Two 4-Year-Olds Die in Toy Box
Two 4-Year-Olds Die in Toy Box

Two 4-Year-Olds Die in Toy Box

No charges have been filed in Jacksonville deaths

(Newser) - Two 4-year-olds in Jacksonville died last weekend in what is believed to be a tragedy that federal regulators have long sought to prevent. The children "were pronounced deceased after they were found unresponsive in a footlocker/toybox while playing at home," the Florida Department of Children and Families said...

Scientist Found in Bunker Died From 'Criminal Act'

Suzanne Eaton was reportedly suffocated

(Newser) - The American scientist whose body was found in a World War II bunker on Crete nearly a week after she vanished died as the result of a "criminal act." A state coroner tells the AP he believes the death occurred near the time Suzanne Eaton was last sighted...

Spike in Suicides Followed Death of Robin Williams

Researchers can't prove his suicide caused copycats, but the numbers did rise after he died

(Newser) - The world was shocked by the August 2014 death of Robin Williams , but "middle-aged men in despair" may have taken his suicide especially hard, Reuters notes. For a study published Wednesday in Plos One , researchers sifted through CDC data from 1999 through 2015 and found that there was a...

Answers Died With Woman Buried Alive at Beach: Cops

Police end investigation into death of Ashley O'Connor

(Newser) - Without discovering a satisfactory explanation for her death, police have closed the investigation into a woman who suffocated beneath the sand of a Maryland beach, WTOP reports. "How the hole collapsed, she unfortunately is the only person that will know," Ocean City Police Chief Ross Buzzuro says. Ashley...

Mom Sues Hospital for $8.6M After Suffocating Her Newborn

Monica Thompson was heavily medicated when staff left him to nurse

(Newser) - Monica Thompson tried for 12 years to get pregnant, so when she had her first child, Jacob, she called him her "miracle baby." Tragically, he didn't live past day 10. Now the mother of a toddler girl, Thompson is suing Portland Adventist Medical Center in Oregon for...

Newlywed Found Dead on Beach Was Buried Alive

Ashley O'Connor suffocated in hole in sand

(Newser) - The Texas woman found buried on a Maryland beach Monday met with what was apparently a fatal stroke of bad luck. Ocean City police say Ashley O'Connor suffocated in a deep hole that apparently collapsed or was otherwise filled with sand sometime after 2am Monday. "We don't...

10-Year-Old Found Dead Under 2 Feet of Snow

It was a freak accident

(Newser) - A boy doing what any kid does on a snow day—digging around in the snow—met a tragic end when the tunnel he had burrowed collapsed and suffocated him. The 10-year-old was playing on his grandparents' farm in upstate New York Wednesday when his father, who was clearing the...

Author's Joke at Her Home May Have Given Killer an Idea

'Great place to hide a body,' said Helen Bailey

(Newser) - While giving a tour of her $1.6 million home in 2013 with her partner in tow, children's author Helen Bailey noted that the cesspool beneath the garage would be a "good place to hide a body," according to court documents. Prosecutors said that's exactly how...

Kitten Experiment in 4th-Grade Textbook Outrages Parents

India science primer tells kids to suffocate cats to illustrate how living beings need air

(Newser) - A textbook has sparked outrage in India for instructing fourth-graders to suffocate a kitten to show how living beings need air. The experiment described in the environmental science textbook for 9-year-olds tells the students to place two kittens in separate boxes, one of them without air holes, and wait to...

'Co-Sleeping' Mom Charged After a 2nd Baby Dies

Erin Piche-Pitts had been warned on co-sleeping dangers for both babies, authorities say

(Newser) - "It happened again" is what Erin Piche-Pitts told authorities when her second infant died of apparent suffocation, even though she'd been repeatedly warned about the dangers of co-sleeping, the New York Times reports. The son of the woman from Winter Haven, Fla., died in October, this time resulting...

Menstruating Teen Sent to Outdoor Hut. She Didn't Survive

Nepal tradition of 'chaupadi' banishes menstruating females from their homes

(Newser) - A 15-year-old girl in Nepal who had been banished to a tiny, outdoor hut because she was having her period was found dead in the morning, and now police are investigating, reports the BBC . It was cold, and she'd lit a small fire, but "there wasn't any...

Toddler Dies Pinned Under Daycare's Beanbag Chair

Employee accidentally sat on the chair, say police

(Newser) - Leonardo Sanchez should be celebrating his second birthday on Saturday, but instead of a party, "I'm planning his funeral," his mom tells Utah's KSL . In what police are calling a "very tragic, sad accident," Leonardo was playing with other children at West Jordan Child...

Girl, 11, Dies After Choking on Marshmallow at Birthday Party

She was unconscious for nearly a week

(Newser) - An 11-year-old Massachusetts girl died early Friday after choking on a marshmallow at a friend's birthday party, NBC 10 News reports. According to WCVB , Iris Estabrooks dropped off her daughter Azriel at the party in Somerset last Saturday. An hour later, she got a call that Azriel was unconscious....

8-Year-Old Found Dead With Birthday Balloon Over Head

Emergency personnel spent nearly an hour trying to revive the girl

(Newser) - Just hours after a birthday party, an 8-year-old girl went to bed at her home in Portland, Ore., only to be found not breathing by her father 20 minutes later with a large Mylar balloon over her head. Now her devastated family is hoping to raise awareness about the dangers...

Cops: Dad Smothered Son While Playing Video Games

Boy, 6, suffocated on Christmas Eve

(Newser) - Authorities say a 6-year-old Florida boy is dead after his father pinned him against a couch while the man and his girlfriend played video games Christmas Eve. Local media outlets report that 31-year-old James Dearman was charged Thursday with aggravated manslaughter of a child. A Sarasota County Sheriff's Office...

How Boa Constrictors Really Kill Their Prey

They cut off a prey's blood flow, which kills in minutes

(Newser) - Most people think constrictors like boas and anacondas squeeze the air out of their prey with their muscular coils. And most people are wrong, according to a new study that offers an entirely different theory. Dickinson College researcher Scott Boback explains that colleague Dave Hardy first noticed two decades ago...

As Mom Held in Murder Try on Son, Cops Eye 2nd Kid's Death

Woman, 19, tried to suffocate baby in video

(Newser) - A Houston mom has already been accused in the attempted murder of her baby son; now, she's also facing a probe in the death of her 20-month-old daughter, authorities say. Cynthia Kaye Wood, 19, brought the son to the hospital, saying he'd had seizures and might have epilepsy,...

Man Captures Python—Then Gets Strangled to Death

Ambar Arianto Mulyo had offered to catch Bali snake

(Newser) - A python strangled a man who had managed to briefly capture it near a luxury hotel on Indonesia's resort island of Bali today. The incident happened around 3am as the 15-foot-long python was slithering across a road near the Bali Hyatt hotel, said Agung Bawa, a security manager at...

Family of Woman Who Suffocated in Sand to Get $80M

Laura Miera died in 2002 after a tractor-trailer struck her car, buried it in sand

(Newser) - A judge has awarded nearly $80 million to the family of a woman who died in 2002 when a tractor-trailer struck her car and buried it in sand, suffocating the woman as teachers and students at a nearby school frantically tried to dig her out. Laura Miera had just dropped...

What Scares Even the Medically Fearless
 What Scares 
 Even the 
 Medically 
 Fearless 
in case you missed it

What Scares Even the Medically Fearless

Suffocation ignites different form of fear: study

(Newser) - A much-studied woman was thought to be fearless—literally unable to experience the emotion after having part of her brain, the amygdala , damaged. Nothing from snakes to assaults could scare the woman, dubbed SM, until, in a recent study, she was faced with the feeling of suffocation. That prompted a...

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