In this chilling episode, we dive into the unsettling world of asphyxiation-related deaths from the unique perspective of my role as a death investigator. Join me as I unravel the haunting stories behind these tragic fatalities, delving into the intricate details and circumstances surrounding each case. With an insider's view, I provide invaluable insights into the investigation process, uncovering the hidden clues and unraveling the mysteries behind these harrowing incidents. We explore the different methods and motives behind asphyxiation, shedding light on the dark forces that can extinguish a life. Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 We've been so busy at the medical examiner's office lately and I know last week we talked about how we have a lot of drownings around the fourth of July and during holidays.
0:41 So I thought I'd talk a little bit about asphyxia because we see a lot of that and that's what occurs in a drowning when you can't breathe because of inhaling water and oxygen can't deliver to the tissues and organs.
0:56 Of course, the people that are at highest risk of that are Children under five teenagers and the elderly.
1:04 Although in the summer, we do see a lot of people in their twenties, thirties and forties again who have those, hold my beer and watch this moment and end up not being able to keep their head above water.
1:20 We have a lot of other deaths that are related to asphyxia and that is basically oxygen deprivation.
1:30 So this can result from drowning, from asthma, choking, seizures, drug overdoses, inhaling chemical substances or even strangulation.
1:44 Basically, asphyxia leads to loss of consciousness and then causes you to suffer a brain injury due to oxygen deprivation and then eventually leads to death.
2:01 And it's a common cause of injuries that lead to death.
2:05 When we look back.
2:06 Statistically back in 2018, there were around 18,000 plus people who died of deaths related to asphyxia.
2:20 Drowning is one, like I said, we saw Fourth of July weekend, we saw three or four drownings in one of the local lakes.
2:29 Their ages varied.
2:31 I think one was in their forties, one was a teenager, one was older, I think we had one in a pool.
2:39 So we see a lot of that, of course, like we talked about last week in the summer when people are outside, a lot of kids maybe aren't being watched quite as closely as they should be, and parents are drinking and maybe they even forget they don't have their life jacket on.
3:00I know that my grand baby was in the lake on Fourth of July.
3:04 And seriously we are in the water and a dirty diaper literally floats up next to her and a dead fish.
3:14 And I don't know the lake is gross.
3:17 We have again heard stories of alligators seen in a lot of the local lakes.
3:25 I do not like being in the lake because I don't like things rubbing against my leg.
3:31 I want to be able to see what it is because in my mind it's gonna be the biggest ugliest, most deadly fish that exists.
3:40 And so I am not a lake swimmer.
3:44 We have seen a lot of drownings.
3:46 I know they've seen them everywhere.
3:47 A lot of it is because it's warm and everyone's in the lake now.
3:52 And of course, we see more in the bigger lake.
3:55 So we do have a lake here that's common to see drownings in it because it's a larger lake and it's more populated on holidays.
4:04 So we also see a lot of chemical asphyxia and that's seen everywhere.
4:11 And basically that is from inhaling a substance that cuts off oxygen supply.
4:19 The substance basically replaces oxygen in the lungs, and it disrupts the oxygen delivery into the bloodstream.
4:29 Some examples of chemical asphyxia would be carbon monoxide.
4:35 You can't smell it.
4:36 It's odorless, colorless.
4:38 And we have a lot of carbon monoxide related deaths because you don't know it's there.
4:45 I'm a little bit and I'm sorry, maybe this is because of my job.
4:48 I'm a little bit leery of like gas ranges and those types of things.
4:54 I grew up in an all-electric household and that's kind of what I'm used to gas scares me a little bit.
5:01 But again, that's probably because of the job that I do every day.
5:05 We've had a lot of people.
5:07 They have a gas leak, they don't know it, they're lying in bed, and they just don't wake up.
5:13 We see that a lot, let's say, for example, if the animals are dead in the home too, then we can pretty much chalk it up to something is going on that would have caused everything living in the house to die.
5:28 Then we will commonly see that it's related to carbon monoxide.
5:33 Another thing they could inhale is keyboard cleaner.
5:36 We do see that a lot also hairspray and common household products, different kinds of cleaners and those types of things just inhaling them.
5:47 I know when I was younger, I had a friend who accidentally actually inhaled chlorine out at the pool and I don't know if she was smelling it to see what it was or what, but it did make her very sick.
6:01 She didn't intend on doing it.
6:03 It just happened, and it was a chemical and so it did make her ill.
6:09 It can though cause permanent damage to the brain.
6:13 Although some people do this on purpose, many people do it on accident.
6:18 So we see both cases, you know, we see accidental deaths where maybe a child or even an adult got into a substance that they didn't know what it was, smelled it and then died or even were injured because of it.
6:35 But then we have a lot of people who inhale keyboard cleaner and paint and paint thinner and gasoline and things like that on purpose in order to commit suicide.
6:48 Although I think most of them are probably accidental.
6:52 They enjoy doing this.
6:54 They enjoy the high, their end goal is not to kill themselves, but just to get that high and sometimes they just overdo it.
7:03 We also see it from solvents, like, again, paint thinner, glue gasoline.
7:09 I know that even when I was a kid, I couldn't remember.
7:13 We had kids in our class who like ate glue now, not so much smelling it.
7:19 But I just thought that was crazy.
7:21 I was like, that can't be good for you.
7:23 Of course, now I'm sure it's all nontoxic because they kind of know what kids do.
7:27 They eat everything and put everything in their mouths.
7:29 But aerosols, spray paint, deodorants, oils, butane lighters, whipped cream aerosols.
7:39 All these kinds of things can actually cause permanent brain damage because again, what it's doing is replacing oxygen in the lungs.
7:51 All of these things can cause muscle wasting, hearing loss.
7:57 They can cause spasms in your arms and legs.
8:00 They can cause you to go into a coma.
8:03 They can cause you to go into heart failure and they can also cause nerve and brain damage.
8:09 It produces the effects of euphoria.
8:13 So it makes them dizzy, their speech might be slurred, it gives them that feeling of being high and causes them to be lightheaded.
8:22 And so that's the goal that they're looking for, right?
8:27 They want that high and that feeling a lot of people when they huff, let's say paint, they're going to spray it into a rag and then huff it.
8:37 So that's also called bagging or sniffing or spraying.
8:42 Some people will sniff the aerosol directly and some people will spray it into a rag and then just huff the chemicals.
8:51 Most of these things contain toxic chemicals that will be absorbed into the bloodstream.
8:59 I'm sure you can guess one of the most telltale signs of someone huffing paint would be paint on their face.
9:08 Some people might use clear.
9:10 But if there's a color related, then most obviously, we are going to know what happened with the death.
9:19 That's again, another way that we can look at the body and do an assessment of the body and kind of determine what happened.
9:27 But a lot of times they will spray the paint into paper bags and then inhale from the paper bag or again, put it on a cloth sniff it.
9:39 That way another thing can be nail polish remover or enamel.
9:45 Again, if you've ever removed your nail polish or been in a nail salon, you know how strong that smell is and it can overtake you, especially if you're holding it right directly up to your nose or mouth or say you're in a small room.
10:03 Glue is very cheap, readily available, not monitored at all.
10:10 And so that can be sniffed or huffed easily.
10:14 And a lot of people may have an allergy to these things which can also on top of replacing the air in their lungs can also cause the airway to swell, which is going to cut off air supply.
10:30 Now, other aerosols besides paint that they can huff are hair spray and deodorants.
10:38 There is pretty wide access to all the different things that people can get a hold of to huff.
10:47 Now, I know I had a death not too long ago where there were several cans of hairspray around the deceit and receipts where she had bought them at CV S I want to say had made a couple of trips, I believe, but there were in excess of 18 bottles of hairspray around her.
11:11 Of course, this was clear, and you couldn't necessarily see it around her nose or mouth and she may have been spraying it into a paper bag.
11:21 She may have been spraying it on a rag, but she was inhaling the chemicals from this hairspray.
11:28 And I know we've talked a little bit about people using household cleaners to asphyxiate themselves in a vehicle where they tape the air vents closed and then actually sit in the vehicle and just asphyxiate on the fumes.
11:48 We see that more and more as well.
11:52 And I think maybe in cases like that people are obviously trying to kill themselves and not just harm themselves in those situations where they close themselves into a vehicle and basically wait to be found.
12:06 But I think as a general rule, most of the people who do the huffing of the nail polish remover and the glue and things like that.
12:15 Just like the high y'all may have seen my strange obsession I think is the name of the TV show where they eat things they're not supposed to eat.
12:24 And I know I've seen people on that show who maybe drink nail polish remover or eat nail polish.
12:33 I know I've seen a couple of different people who eat the stuffing out of their couch and things like that.
12:41 It's the same type of thing.
12:43 People just get obsessed, and they get hooked on doing certain things that aren't necessarily healthy for them.
12:52 Another thing that we've seen quite a bit of surprisingly is the intentional restriction of oxygen for sexual arousal.
13:02 We call that auto erotic asphyxiation.
13:06 And we see that a lot and the intention is again to cut off the oxygen supply and the blood flow just long enough that you get that high or that arousal.
13:22 And the only problem is that when that behavior is enjoyed alone, it's a little bit of a difficult situation to get out of.
13:31 Not too long ago.
13:32 We had a gentleman who was found hanged by a belt and he was in his closet.
13:40 He was in his twenties.
13:42 Let me tell you how this was obvious that this is what's going on in front of him.
13:48 He had an iPad, there was lubricant and there was a sock over his genitals, I guess I should have told you in the beginning that this one might be a little bit not child friendly, but it's not terrible.
14:03 It's just the truth.
14:04 It's really what we see, but there was some sort of pump device in his anus.
14:10 So it's obvious, you know, in a situation like that and, and I'm sure that his idea was not for his parents to see him like that.
14:18 I don't think at all that his intention was to kill himself.
14:21 But how unfortunate, you know, that his parents had to be the one who found him in the closet, but because of the position he was in and the situation he was in and the fact that he was in the closet, obviously hoping not to be found and the ipad and the lubricant and all the other things were in there, you know, that kind of made this obvious he was trying to intentionally restrict his own oxygen, but it was for sexual arousal and he was not intending.
14:55 We don't believe any way in actually killing himself.
14:58 There was a belt tied to a pole and that was around his neck.
15:04 He was able to stand up to prevent any kind of injury to his neck.
15:09 But obviously, when you pass out, you're not able to do that, maybe a little more pressure goes on your neck than you planned and you end up actually hanging yourself unintentionally, even though you were intentionally trying to restrict the oxygen.
15:25 But, you know, a lot of people do this with someone else there so that if something goes wrong, then they can actually help you.
15:32 But if there's not someone available, then this might be what happens when we see this though.
15:39 We also look at the person's history like he had a good job.
15:43 He was a happy person.
15:45 Made good grades in school, had a lot of friends.
15:49 No medical history didn't use alcohol, didn't smoke cigarettes, no history of drug use.
15:56 Very good family.
15:59 So we also look and that's why the social and medical history is important too.
16:04 We look at those things because those things, if his social life or medical history had issues, we might come closer to suspecting that someone would do this intentionally.
16:18 But again, the iPad, the lubricant, all the different things also lead us to believe with his history that this was not a suicide, this was an accident and just an attempt to basically arouse himself sexually.
16:37 We do see that a lot.
16:39 We see people dressed all different ways doing this.
16:44 As you can imagine leather.
16:46 We've seen people dressed in leather with dolls, dressed in leather that match them.
16:52 We see everything y'all.
16:54 I'm sure that if you could just have a day in the life of a death investigator, it would open your eyes to a lot of things that go on that we don't ever hear about in the news, but we probably are ok, not hearing about it.
17:07 Most people choking is another thing that cuts off the air supply to the brain, to the lungs, everything else.
17:16 And so choking on a foreign object, you're unable to inhale oxygen strangulation, even just incorrect position.
17:28 And I'll talk about that a little bit too, but that's called positional asphyxia.
17:33 And that can be caused by several different things.
17:37 So I'll talk about that in a minute.
17:38 Also, seizures can cause pauses in breathing, which can cut off oxygen supply when people overdose on drugs or take too much of something.
17:51 Your brain can't regulate your breathing.
17:54 Your brain doesn't tell you when to take a breath because you've had so many drugs that your brain doesn't even know what to do.
18:04 A couple of different things that we've seen related to asphyxia as far as death are an 87-year-old female who was in a nursing home and found between the mattress and the bedrail, she was actually partially suspended.
18:26 So her neck was kind of caught in the bed rail in cases like that.
18:32 You may have little old people in nursing homes.
18:36 We put the bed rolls up to protect them right.
18:39 The bedrolls go up to keep people from getting out of bed and falling because that's something that you also don't want to happen to an 87-year-old break a hip.
18:49 And so those are up for their safety.
18:52 But at the same time, it can cause issues.
18:55 So if they try to get out of bed with the railing there, in this case, they get hung basically between the mattress and the rail, she again was partially suspended by her neck.
19:08 It was actually ruled accidental due to positional asphyxia because she was fine.
19:15 But when she got stuck, it cut off the oxygen supply to her brain and she actually did die.
19:21 This happens a lot where you know, something that we use for safety purposes can also cause something bad to happen.
19:30 Unfortunately, that's one reason why, you know, people at this age, they may have the alarms on their beds so that if they move or try to get up, the nurses are notified.
19:42 The only problem is there's such a shortage of nurses now that you can't always get in there.
19:48 Unfortunately, to keep something bad from happening, that's your intention.
19:53 But that's how these types of things happen.
19:57 Another case of positional asphyxia where you can be injured by something that definitely should be used and can definitely save your life are car accident.
20:09 So I've had a couple of cases where people are actually fine at the time of the accident but can't get out of the seat belt and actually are asphyxiated by a seatbelt following a car accident.
20:26 I know I had a case in Houston where a young man, he was on his lunch break he was driving a convertible, had his seat belt on.
20:34 Life was good.
20:35 He was changing lanes and he did not see a semi that was kind of partially already past him.
20:43 He couldn't see the trailer.
20:45 And so he went to change lanes and pulled up under the semi basically and was trapped.
20:53 And when EMS got there, he didn't have a scratch on him.
20:57 So this guy had no injuries at all.
20:59 Y'all.
21:00 He was struggling to get out of the car and Ems was struggling to help him and he actually died of positional asphyxia because the seatbelt was so tight.
21:12 It cut off his air supply.
21:14 I know that that was hard for Ems because they described it to me about how he was trying to get out of the car and he couldn't, they were trying to help him and they couldn't get the seatbelt cut off in time, you know, tried to save him but couldn't.
21:29 And I believe he was like in his thirties, I'm definitely not saying don't wear a seat belt or don't raise the bed rails for your 87-year-old grandmother.
21:40 But these are things that aren't intended to hurt us but still can.
21:44 The same with hairspray.
21:46 It's not intended to hurt us, but it can sometimes quicker than others.
21:52 It's sad when those things happen because you see people doing the right thing, you know, nurses putting up the side rail, people wearing their seatbelts and it still results in something bad.
22:04 So again, still highly encourage the use of seat belts and highly encourage you putting up the bed rail for a patient.
22:13 But these things do still happen.
22:16 Another case of positional asphyxia would be a seven-week-old.
22:23 We did have a seven-week-old who was found wedged between the couch cushions, taking a nap.
22:29 Everything's great.
22:30 Lay the child on the couch and you know, they wiggle, they move around a lot.
22:35 Not only could they fall off the couch, but they can get wedged between the cushions and because they can't stand up or move their head as easily, they basically get hung there and are unable to get themselves out.
22:51 Something gets in front of their mouth and nose and then they just cannot breathe anymore.
22:57 Anyway, I thought asphyxia would be interesting to talk about because we were talking about drownings last week, even though that is one of the asphyxia related deaths because it cuts off the oxygen supply and the blood flow.
23:12 There are so many different other ones, people who have a history of seizures again, they, you know, they have those pauses and breathing and I know that I've been around people who've had seizures.
23:23 It's just important to keep them safe and those types of things anyway, hopefully that educated y'all a little bit.
23:32 It is interesting to see how many different asphyxia related deaths there are, I mean, 18,000 in one year of people dying of suffocation.
23:45 It's really sad.
23:46 A lot of those or most of those are accidental anyway.
23:52 I hope that everyone is having a great week.
23:56 We are having some weird weather here in Texas again.
23:59 I know I always talk about that, but it's been crazy.
24:02 We'll have rain.
24:03 I think some people are having hail.
24:05 We get a lot of winds but then during the day it's sunny and 110 degrees.
24:10 So it's been nuts.
24:12 I am over summer already and I'm ready for fall anyway.
24:16 I hope y'all have a great week and we will see you all next time.
24:21 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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24:35 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.