Third-Grader Found Hanging On Closet Hook At School
Boy In Intensive Care
UPDATED: 2:00 pm EDT April 27, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- A third-grader at a Philadelphia public school was found hanging on a hook in a coatroom closet Tuesday, and police aren't yet sure exactly what happened.
Sources told WCAU-TV in Philadelphia that the 9-year-old boy is in intensive care at St. Christopher's Hospital. School officials and Philadelphia police are trying to find out if his hanging was an accident or if it was intentional.
The boy attends Samuel Pennypacker School in the West Oak Lane section of Philadelphia. ClickOnDetroit.com is withholding the child's name because the circumstances surrounding his injuries are still sketchy.
According to the Philadelphia public schools chief executive officer, Paul Vallas, about 9:30 a.m. a teacher sent the boy to the closet to hang up his coat.
"The one child in question had not hung up his coat, so he was asked to go to the coat room and hang up his coat. When he didn't come out -- (the teacher) described it as a minute, a minute and a half in the coatroom -- and then she called him and then went in and she saw him hanging from his uniform," Vallas said.
A school official administered CPR to the boy, who was unconscious.
School administrators said that none of the other students saw the boy unconscious in the closet, but WCAU-TV reported that a student who was in the class at the time had a different story.
With his mother's permission, the student said that it was not the teacher who found the student in the closet.
"He went in the closet and my friends heard some noise, so they went to go check on him and they saw him and he wasn't breathing," the boy said. He said those boys then told the teacher.
WCAU-TV brought the discrepancy to the attention of school officials who, at this time, continue to believe the teacher's account of what happened.
Vallas met with the boy's guardians -- his grandparents -- at the hospital.
"They just wanted an explanation of what happened, and we told them that the police were investigating, and obviously the school district is doing its own investigation. We just want to find out exactly what happened," Vallas said.
Vallas said that the grandparents told him there were no signs that the child was upset or depressed in any way.
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http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/4421671/detail.html
I don't get it. If he was hanging by his clothes then how was he unconscious?
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