A 3-year-old girl who stopped breathing after apparently choking on the handles on a monkey bar at a nursery school in Kagawa Prefecture later recovered in a hospital and started to breath by herself.
According to the nursery, the playground apparatus is about 1.4-meters tall and its handles are about a meter above ground. It was during play time Wednesday when she went to the ladder at around 9:20 a.m. Ten minutes later, an instructor noticed she had apparently suffocated and called an ambulance. She was rushed to the hospital in a state of cardiac arrest.
Police said the girl climbed a pole on the lower part of the apparatus and placed her head between the handles. It is suspected that she then slipped, they said.
The city of Zentsuji, where the nursery school is located, said 126 children attend the facility. When the accident happened, about 57 kids were playing outside.
"I'm sorry that this happened after I told their parents they can trust us at the entrance ceremony on April 8," said Takashi Katayama, 75, head of the company that runs the nursery.