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The Choking Game

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Yet despite the efforts of organizations like GASP, it appears that kids are learning more about the game's fun than its danger. Critics are quick to point to MySpace and YouTube, where adolescent auteurs have recorded themselves playing the game solo or with friends. The videos star laughing, normal-looking kids, all waking up at the end, perfectly healthy. (YouTube's “code of conduct” states that users should not post “videos showing dangerous or illegal acts.” When asked if the choking game was a dangerous or illegal act, a spokesman for YouTube simply referred the Houston Press to the code of conduct.)

The folks at GASP would rather kids see the video of a 15-year-old Twin Cities boy named Ryan Tucker. That clip, on GASP's site, shows a kid who played the choking game and woke up with severe brain damage. Ryan now looks like he was born with cerebral palsy and spends his days in therapy, learning how to walk and trying to launch a ball into a brightly colored set of little plastic bowling pins.

In an article about the choking game, Julie Rosenbluth of the American Council for Drug Education wrote, “A child playing this game could lose consciousness within a minute and die in as little as 2–4 minutes, as the weight of their body further constricts blood and oxygen to the brain.”

According to Rosenbluth, most kids playing the game are between 9 and 14. “Many preteens and teens participate in this lethal game out of curiosity — not rebellion, depression or anger,” she wrote. “The game may be played by kids who are not outwardly at-risk — students who may do well in school and are close with their families. To many kids, the choking game seems like a harmless way to get a rush.”

This description would have applied to Haley Kinney, the popular 14-year-old girl the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office originally believed committed suicide in a nearly full house, leaving behind neither a note nor a history of depression or suicidal behavior. Haley's father, Gary Kinney, says he was unhappy with the initial police investigation and Medical Examiner's ruling. Seven months after he requested another investigation and examination, Haley's manner of death was changed to “undetermined.” Gary Kinney maintains that the ruling should be “accidental.”

Her brother says he and Haley learned of the choking game in sixth grade. It was the last week of school, during a “free day” where the students got to play outside on Strack Intermediate's field and gorge themselves on ice cream. One of the kids was showing the others how good it felt to hyperventilate and pass out. Kirby liked it immediately. He never knew how much Haley liked it. He never thought she played it after that week.

In seventh grade, Kirby saw the movie Life as a House, and watched as one of the characters tried to play the choking game by hanging himself from his closet clothes rack. To Kirby, it looked perfectly inviting. He would wait until the house was empty and then get the belt.

“I always seemed to land on my stomach, or something...and wake up,” he says.

Then, when it happened, when the medics were kneeling by Haley's body, Kirby ran upstairs and punched the walls. He threw chairs. The anger carried over into the classroom, and after the 29th time he was written up, Kirby transferred to Klein Annex, an alternative school. He needed to shake the stress, but he knew he could never play the choking game anymore. He tried marijuana for the first time and was surprised to find a familiar feeling. But his parents found out and put an end to that. And even Kirby wondered what he was doing. Haley abhorred drugs and would've been disappointed. He was going to have to get through this straight. But it would be hard for Kirby, knowing that this person who was always right there was gone.

“You're so used to her riding the bus with you every morning, and you're so used to y'all...racing back home,” he says. “And then you just don't have that anymore. You're walking home by yourself.”

After Haley died, Kirby says, he talked to her friends and found out she had been playing the game with another girl on several occasions. Space monkey, they called it. He had already known, but this news made the original suicide ruling even harder to bear. Kirby equates suicide with surrender, saying it is something his sister would never do. It's when talking about the original manner of death that Kirby slips into the present tense.

“Haley's not a failure, period,” he says. “She won't take that for an answer.”

On day five, Levi says, “I played the game.”

Investigators had been talking to him, trying to figure out what happened. Hazing? Attempted suicide? Autoerotic asphyxiation? Levi had been reluctant to talk. The choking game was a private thing, and he had only done it twice before on his own. Carrie doesn't know what to think; she's never heard of this before. So she does the research online and finds GASP. But she's not prepared for what she sees on the list of names. Boy, 15, Harlingen, 10/28/06. It's Levi. And she scrolls down, and down, and down, and tries to process all the names below his. And she looks back at her son's entry and sees something that sets it apart. An asterisk. On this list of dead, Levi is an exception. She feels she has to do something.

When she calls GASP, she says, “My name is Carrie Draher. My son is Boy, 15, Harlingen, 10/28/06.”

While Levi gathers his motor skills in therapy, Carrie reads everything she can about the choking game. Parents need to know. Kids need to be warned. They aren't listening. But maybe they'd listen to someone who actually died playing it. At first, Carrie and her husband are reluctant to parade Levi in front of the cameras like a freak. Months pass, and she talks with Levi. He says he's healthy enough to share his story with whoever will listen. Carrie and Levi now go to schools to help deliver a choking game awareness program. In March, the campaign landed Levi on the front page of The New York Times. From there, mother and son have gone on CNN, the Today show and Hannity, among others.

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