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- PULASKI GIRL FOUND DEAD OF HANGING POLICE CALL IT ACCIDENTShow Details
Watertown Daily Times (NY) - October 11, 1999Browse Issues
The tragedy of how a 7-year-old girl was hanged Saturday evening in the backyard of her Route 3 home will probably never be explained, a state police investigator said today.
Emily Louise Rice was found dead by her father, hanging by a nylon clothesline rope from a low-level branch of a maple tree. Robert A. Rice frantically unfastened the rope from the limb, but was unable to save his daughter. Efforts of emergency responders to the 6:38 p.m. 911 call were also in vain, and the child was pronounced dead on arrival at Oswego City Hospital.
An assistant Onondaga County medical examiner, Dr. Carol Dignon, found no evidence that the child was involved in a struggle before her death, Senior Investigator Wayne W. Corsa said. He anticipated a ruling that the death was accidental, from injuries "consistent with hanging."
"It's hard," Mr. Corsa said. "The only one who could tell us what happened is the girl." He said it was likely a result of "kids' play," in which children "don't realize the consequences of their actions."
Emily had been playing in her father's mobile home with her brother, Robert Jr., 10, and an 11- year-old cousin, Mr. Corsa said. Then she went outdoors alone. About 10 to 15 minutes later, the other two children went outdoors, discovered her hanging, and screamed for Mr. Rice.
He lifted his daughter's limp body, unfastened the rope from the branch, then placed her on the ground and removed the section of rope that was tied around her neck, Mr. Corsa said. Since the rope had been removed in the urgency to try to save the child's life, police do not have a clear picture of how it became fastened to the limb and to her neck, he said. It is known that she climbed onto a picnic table, and was standing approximately "chest to eye level" next to the limb. "Does she tie the rope to the limb?" Mr. Corsa wondered. "Was she going to try swinging?" If there had been foul play involved, "this was not a limb that you would choose to hang someone," he said.
There were no sightings of anyone having passed by the trailer at the time of the incident, Mr. Corsa said. The investigation is continuing, he said.
Born Dec. 28, 1991, in Watertown, she was a daughter of Robert A. and Gail M. Bouchard Rice.
She was a second-grader at Lura Sharp Elementary School and a member of Pulaski T-Ball Little League and Salmon River Figure Skating Club.
Surviving besides her father, Pulaski, and her mother, Port St. Lucie, Fla., are a brother, Robert A. Jr., Pulaski; her paternal grandparents, Aldwin and Viva Rice, Boylston; her maternal stepgrandfather and grandmother, William and Patricia Shatney, Lacona; her maternal grandfather and stepgrandmother, Raymond and Nancy Bouchard, Sandy Creek; her maternal great-grandmother, Pauline Hill, Swanton, Vt., and her maternal great-grandfather, George Hill, Kansas City, Mo.
The funeral will be private. Burial will be in South Richland Cemetery, Fernwood.
Calling hours will be from 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesday at Foster-Hax Funeral Home.
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1991 - 1999 (7 years)