Unusual Accidental Asphyxial Deaths (Case Study) (Report‪)‬

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We present seven unusual cases of accidental asphyxiation in adults, autopsied over a five-year period at the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office (WCMEO) in Detroit, Michigan. The underlying causes and manners of each death are similar in these cases, but the circumstances surrounding death are unique. These seven avenues to accidental asphyxiation include the following: two cases in which individuals were "buried alive" (cases 1 and 2), a case of traumatic asphyxia in an individual "squeezed to death" in a trash compactor (case 3), a case of high altitude hypoxia/hypobaria coupled with hypothermia in a "stowaway" attempting to flee his native country in the passenger jet wheel well of an airplane (case 4), a case of asphyxia caused by choking on a foreign object after a subject was taken into custody by police (case 5), a case of pastural asphyxia in a "squatter" found decomposed and mummified in a machine shop (case 6), and a case of accidental hanging in an alcoholic who, while acutely intoxicated, attempted to climb stairs in an unusual restraint scenario (case 7). The current literature offers an array of the world's reports citing accidental asphyxiation as a cause and manner of death; those similar to the following seven cases are discussed in tandem.