LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas man is recovering in a Wichita, Kan., hospital after he slipped a noose around his neck while posing for a photograph at a Wild West museum Wednesday and then blacked out, nearly suffocating.
The 69-year-old man from Parks in Scott County, whom police would not name, was treated at a Dodge City, Kan., hospital and then taken to the Wichita hospital for further care.
The man put his neck through a noose hanging from a tree in the “Hanging Tree” exhibit so his wife could photograph him, said Macee James, an administrative assistant at the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City, Kan.
The museum embraces the frontier history of the southwestern Kansas town with displays of the Wild West and western expansion.
James said two ropes hung from the tree and were supposed to be about 15 feet up, but one rope somehow was lowered and could be reached.
“He took advantage of that for a photo opportunity,” James said. “Then he lost consciousness.”
The man leaned to pull the rope taut to make the photographs look “more authentic” and then blackedout, said Dodge City Police Chief Robin James.
The man’s wife shot four pictures of her husband with her digital camera, thinking at first he was joking when he fell unconscious.
“They realized he was in trouble when stuff started dribbling out of his mouth,” the police chief said. “Each photograph looked progressively worse. He looked dead in the last one.”
The man’s wife and two others from the museum’s gift shop held him upright while someone pulled the noose from his neck.
“He was a lucky guy,” Chief James said. “If they didn’t [get] him out of the noose, he would have died.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 09/24/2010