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Mike Bleak has served as commissioner in Iron County, Utah, since 2016. He previously worked in public safety for more than two decades, most recently as a detective with the Cedar City Police Department. Here, Mike and his wife Amy talk about “the choking game,” a topic Mike is passionate about preventing and speaks about close to home and across the United States, as well as in Europe and South America. Mike is also open and candid about experiencing post-traumatic stress from his career in law enforcement.
Mike Bleak: There's this game. It's not really a game at all, but it's an activity where kids either by themselves or together in groups do things that deprive their brain of oxygen, which gives them kind of a rush. And come to find out, this is an activity that's been played for generations and continues to be a big problem.
Amy Bleak: Can you tell us about how you became involved with a choking game cause?
Mike: We were called one night to the scene of a 15-year-old young man, and the initial call was that it was a suicide, that it was a hanging in the backyard. I remember showing up to that scene, just like hundreds of others, and hours going by and not finding those things that would lead me to believe that this was just an obvious suicide.
A lot of times people leave a note, or you can tie specific circumstances in their mind that they believe that was their best option - whether it's trouble at home, trouble in school, trouble with a girlfriend or boyfriend, whatever that is. This was a young man who was reportedly pretty well-rounded, had a good relationship with his family, had good relationships with peers at school, had good relationships with his teachers. In fact, he'd been involved in family activities right up to the point where they found him deceased, and there just wasn't anything that pointed really directly to a suicide, which was kind of unnerving.
In interviewing family and friends over the course of that night, his stepmother said something to the effect of, "Well, he was playing that game at school where they choke themselves, and we told him, 'Don't ever do that again. That was stupid. You can die doing that.'" And I guess I'd heard the term "the choking game," but never really had given it any thought.
Amy: I remember that night and I remember you saying, "I can't call this a suicide and do that to the family knowing that there may be something else to this." And I remember saying, "You need to go with your gut."
Mike: I've got kind of a favorite philosopher that said, "To the living, we owe respect. To the dead, we owe only the truth." We ended up calling it an accidental death by strangulation due to the choking game. Within just a short amount of time, I was contacted by the medical examiner's office, who said, "We have a case that you investigated several years ago. Initially that young man's death had been ruled as a suicidal hanging. Now the mother is coming forward and petitioning us to reopen that case because she believes her son's death may have been a choking game death."
After literally eight months of investigation, the medical examiner changed the death certificate to be an accident due to the choking game. During that time, I went to the medical examiner's office to research these cases and found out that the original case that we did in 2011 was the very first choking game death ever ruled in the state of Utah.
We had another choking game death six weeks after the first one in 2011, so now we had three choking game deaths that I had been involved in investigating, which were the only three choking game deaths ever reported in the state of Utah. Statistically, that is completely impossible and that's what really got me interested in educating myself. Now I've had the opportunity to lecture all across the United States, in Europe, in South America, all because of this chance case where we really took the extra time to get it right.
Amy Bleak: Can you tell us about how you became involved with a choking game cause?
Mike: We were called one night to the scene of a 15-year-old young man, and the initial call was that it was a suicide, that it was a hanging in the backyard. I remember showing up to that scene, just like hundreds of others, and hours going by and not finding those things that would lead me to believe that this was just an obvious suicide.
A lot of times people leave a note, or you can tie specific circumstances in their mind that they believe that was their best option - whether it's trouble at home, trouble in school, trouble with a girlfriend or boyfriend, whatever that is. This was a young man who was reportedly pretty well-rounded, had a good relationship with his family, had good relationships with peers at school, had good relationships with his teachers. In fact, he'd been involved in family activities right up to the point where they found him deceased, and there just wasn't anything that pointed really directly to a suicide, which was kind of unnerving.
In interviewing family and friends over the course of that night, his stepmother said something to the effect of, "Well, he was playing that game at school where they choke themselves, and we told him, 'Don't ever do that again. That was stupid. You can die doing that.'" And I guess I'd heard the term "the choking game," but never really had given it any thought.
Amy: I remember that night and I remember you saying, "I can't call this a suicide and do that to the family knowing that there may be something else to this." And I remember saying, "You need to go with your gut."
Mike: I've got kind of a favorite philosopher that said, "To the living, we owe respect. To the dead, we owe only the truth." We ended up calling it an accidental death by strangulation due to the choking game. Within just a short amount of time, I was contacted by the medical examiner's office, who said, "We have a case that you investigated several years ago. Initially that young man's death had been ruled as a suicidal hanging. Now the mother is coming forward and petitioning us to reopen that case because she believes her son's death may have been a choking game death."
After literally eight months of investigation, the medical examiner changed the death certificate to be an accident due to the choking game. During that time, I went to the medical examiner's office to research these cases and found out that the original case that we did in 2011 was the very first choking game death ever ruled in the state of Utah.
We had another choking game death six weeks after the first one in 2011, so now we had three choking game deaths that I had been involved in investigating, which were the only three choking game deaths ever reported in the state of Utah. Statistically, that is completely impossible and that's what really got me interested in educating myself. Now I've had the opportunity to lecture all across the United States, in Europe, in South America, all because of this chance case where we really took the extra time to get it right.