BOY DIES IN SWING ACCIDENT

Ricky Lee Hale loved to play on the swings.

That love of swings turned into tragedy Friday evening. The 9-year-old Cape Girardeau boy died as a result of an accident that occurred while he was playing on a swing in the backyard of his home.

Family members found the boy hanging from the chain of a swing at 5:40 p.m. at his home in the northeast part of the city, police said.

He was rushed by ambulance to Southeast Missouri Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m. Friday.

"He was basically brain dead," said John Carpenter, Cape Girardeau County coroner.

"It takes very little pressure on those vessels in the neck to shut off blood to the brain," Carpenter said.

The coroner called it "a freak accident."

The boy's pastor, Ron Seal of Faith Baptist Temple in Cape Girardeau, said Hale must have slipped while on the swing.

Most playground injuries occur on swings, according to the National Program for Playground Safety at the University of Northern Iowa.

Each year nationwide, some nine to 17 children die in playground equipment-related accidents. Strangulation accounts for 47 percent of the deaths.

Hale was an honors student at Washington Elementary School.

"It is terrible. It is tragic," said Barbara Blanchard, who retired last month as principal of Washington Elementary School.

"Ricky and I spent a lot of time together, and just talking out on the playground," she recalled.

"He would come down and visit with me in the office," said Blanchard.

He would have been in fourth grade this fall, she said.

Blanchard said Hale enjoyed being out on the playground. "He liked to swing."

He also liked to draw. He won a drawing contest that was held by Southeast Missouri State University in observance of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King's birthday.

Blanchard knew Hale's family. As a classroom teacher, she had taught Ricky's mother and other family members. She knew the boy's grandparents too.

"It is always so difficult to see a parent in pain," said Blanchard, who visited with the family at the hospital Saturday.

Hale lived with his mother, Kimberly, and his grandparents, Bob and Sylvia Luebbers, in Cape Girardeau. Hale's father, Richard, lives in McClure, Ill.

"He was all boy," remembered Pastor Seal. "He was very active."

Seal said he had known Hale for about a year and a half. The boy was baptized at the Faith Baptist Temple just over a year ago, on June 23, 1996.

Seal said it was Hale's wish that his organs be donated. Seal said the wish was carried out. "There may be life to come out of his death," the minister said.