Garrett Pope Jr – described by his parents as a typical, happy 11-year-old boy – was found dead in his bedroom at his family’s Indian Land home on Wednesday (31 August).
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“Our tablets and computers show no online research that he might have done”, Pope Sr. wrote, saying his son may have learned about the fad from other children either at school or in his Indian Land neighborhood.
“People need to know about this”, the boy’s father said.
The father of the SC 11-year-old wrote in a public Facebook post that he and his wife spent time looking through all of the family’s electronics and found no signs to suggest their son had been doing any research on the game that ultimately led to his death.
The case, deputy coroner Tony Broome told the Lancaster News, is “almost textbook”.
In the interest of full disclosure, Garrett Pope Sr. works for WBTV’s parent company, Raycom Media. It was around 4 p.m. on Wednesday when the boy was discovered in his room.
“My family has never felt pain like this before, and we don’t (want) anyone else to go through what we are going through”, his father Garrett Pope Sr. posted to Facebook in a plea for parents to talk about the risky practice with their kids.
The memorial service for Garrett Pope, Jr.is being held on Tuesday at Burgess Funeral Home. Previous victims of this bad game had died by asphyxiating themselves with a dog collar or a towel.
The study from 2008 went on to reveal that roughly 82 deaths occurred in relation to this game between the years of 1995 and 2007. Most were boys, at an average age of about 13. One of Pope’s friends recently dropped off a new freezer after the family ran out of freezer space to store the incoming food.
The CDC encourages parents, educators and health-care providers to familiarize themselves with signs of the game. Disorientation, the presence of ropes, marks on the neck, and bloodshot eyes are all signs someone is playing the game. She said she heard about “The Choking Game” after a summer football coach mentioned it. But when she raised the topic with Garrett, the boy claimed he knew nothing about it.
“I should have pushed it further”, said Stacy.
“When you look at the Choking Game and all the circumstances that surround it, this is nearly textbook”, said Tony Broome, the county’s deputy coroner.
Pope said the Facebook post was meant to give other parents “words of caution”.
Pope continued in the post: “Please talk about this with your kids, and do everything you can to prevent a similar tragedy”. “My family has never felt pain like this before, and we don’t [want] anyone else to go through what we are going through”.
“He was so young and impressionable, he didn’t know what he was doing, and made a awful mistake”, wrote his father, Garrett Pope Sr., on Facebook.
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“He took this awful “game” too far”, the boy’s grief-stricken father said on Facebook Friday. His funeral service is Tuesday.
