Rohnert Park 10-year-old 'fine' after near-asphyxiation

<p>A 10-year-old Rohnert Park boy who nearly asphyxiated Sunday evening when his neck became entangled in a bedsheet hung as a makeshift tree swing is undergoing psychological evaluation to ensure the incident was accidental and not intentional, police said Wednesday.</p><p>The unidentified boy has told his parents he was goofing around when he thrust his head into a loop of material and it tightened around his neck, causing him to lose consciousness, Rohnert Park Public Safety Sgt. Jeff Nicks said.</p><p>But statements he made at the scene of the incident at a townhouse complex on Meadow Pines Drive prompted doctors at Children’s Hospital in Oakland to require evaluation to make sure he wasn’t a danger to himself, Nicks said Wednesday.</p><p>The boy is being seen at a Sacramento hospital but is doing well, in no small part due to a playmate’s effort to get help Sunday when it was clear his friend was in trouble, Nicks said.</p><p>“If it wasn’t for this 8-year-old little boy, who ran to get adults to help, and the citizens who responded perfectly by rescuing this boy (with emergency breathing and CPR), we could have had the worst case scenario unfolding in front of us,” Nicks said Wednesday.</p><p>Because of the help the 10-year-old “is fine,” he said. “He’s up walking, talking. They’re hoping to have him released tomorrow.”</p><p>Investigators also will interview the child once he is home to try to settle the question of what happened, Nicks said.</p><p>“I’d like to think, if nothing else, they were horsing around and it just went bad,” he said.</p>