You can add a 10-year-old Harris County boy to the list of deaths caused by the Iraq War. The boy apparently watched news coverage of the mishandled execution of Saddam Hussein and accidentally hanged himself afterwards. The Houston Chronicle reports:
A 10-year-old boy who apparently was mimicking the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein accidentally hanged himself on New Year’s Eve, authorities said.
Webster police Lt. Tom Claunch said officers were called to an apartment in the 800 block of NASA Parkway about 7:30 p.m. on Sunday and found the boy dead.
Sergio Pelico’s mother told police he had watched a report on Saddam’s death on a Telemundo news broadcast before he hanged himself, Claunch said.
“It appears to be accidental,” he said of the boy’s death. “Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting.”
The same article says that another boy in Pakistan apparently also accidentally hanged himself after also trying to act out the execution of Saddam.
That makes it about 3,000 U.S. military deaths, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths and two boys dead from playing hanging Saddam Hussein.
