By Bre McAdam

Sask. family goes public after son dies from choking game

Nov 4, 2011 | 11:50 AM

A Saskatoon family is struggling to find a new normal after their 13-year-old son died last month.

And it all happened because of a tragic game.

Zachary Dawson's family is going public with his story in hopes of preventing similar deaths in the future.

Dawn Dawson says her son died on Oct.14 after playing something called the choking game by himself.

“Cutting off oxygen to the brain to give yourself a light-headed feeling. Sometimes people pass out. Sometimes they don’t. He was unable to rescue himself,” she said.

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Dawn admits it's hard to talk about, which is one of the reasons why she had never heard about the game before, or thought to talk about it with her son.

“We honestly think he was doing something he didn’t think was wrong. That he didn’t realize how unsafe it was,” said Dawn.

Now she's campaigning to have auto asphyxiation somehow incorporated into school curriculums.

She says the most important thing is to educate families about how dangerous this choking game truly is.

For more on the choking game, click HERE.

news@panow.com