This image shows how 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson tragically died in 2013, becoming trapped inside a rolled-up gym mat at his high school while retrieving his shoes.
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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Don’t put yourself in a situation where you can Nutty Putty yourself.
why his shoes were at the bottom of the rolled-up mat:
>Kendrick, along with other athletes at the school, would often store their belongings in odd places to avoid paying the locker fees.
>One of the most common hiding places, especially for gym shoes, was the rolled-up wrestling mats stored in one of the two gymnasiums.
>This gym, called the “old gym”, held several of these mats, some of them stored lying down and others stored standing upright.
>Kendrick shared a pair of Adidas shoes with another student, and they would store these shoes in one of these standing mats between uses. It was this odd practice that would lead to tragedy in early 2013.
Reminds me of the 16-17 year old who died when he reached over the third row of his parents Honda Odyssey and the seat folded onto him pinning him and he died before his parents had a chance to go out looking for him when he never showed up at home.
Horrible.
fucking vultures are charging kids to use gym lockers at school???!!
That very nearly happened to me. I was 10 and at the middle school gym on the weekend. My brother and his friends were playing basketball, and I was exploring and playing in the supply room. I crawled down a rolled-up wrestling mat just like this and got stuck. I panicked, screamed, tried to shimmy myself back up feet-first, tried to rock to knock it over (but was trapped amongst many mats) but ultimately was helpless and stuck. My brother thankfully came looking for me about an hour later, and I was kind of a traumatized mess for a few hours after being stuck upside down for so long. It seems so dumb and embarrassing. It is shocking to see that someone actually died this way, but I can totally see how. I still remember it as one of the most terrified I ever felt as a child.
This story always makes a chill go up my spine because I’ve almost been trapped in a gym mat in the same way. In high school I climbed on top of some rolled up mats and went down the center to retrieve a basketball, but I overestimated how easy it would be to reverse out.
It’s definitely one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. When I realized I was stuck, I started screaming for help— but after several minutes of screaming and no help, I realized that nobody could hear me. I was essentially screaming into several layers of soundproof foam. I was getting dizzy from being upside down and yelling, and the small amount of air I had was stagnant and hot. I tried to kick my legs to get somebody’s attention that way too. I was trying desperately to claw at the sides of the mat, but the heat was making my hands sweaty and too slippery to gain any traction. Blood was rushing into my face.
I managed to dig my elbows into the walls to get enough leverage to back out and get my knees back up on the edge so I could finally pull myself out. When I finally popped up, the entire gym was empty. Nobody had even known I was in trapped upside down in that gym mat. It was terrifying.
I remember this story! And there was speculation that maybe it was foul play like a hazing incident. I remember not being able to understand how that could happen. Never saw this explanation
Meanwhile AI….
Positional asphyxia is terrifying because if we misjudge a space by INCHES it could be life or death…
Thank god I’m fat and lazy and I would never try to do such a thing.
Reminds me of a fugitive that got himself trapped inside of a support column while escaping from the law. Nobody found him until sewage started leaking from the column.
He was stuck up-right, with his hands above his head, to decrease his width, allowing him to slide further in.
Others have mentioned nutty putty or the kid who got stuck by the backseat of his car, but this reminds of that dead body that was found stuck behind a fridge in a store in the US. Was apparently up there cleaning, fell head first down and got stuck. The sound of the fridges masked his calls for help and he died
[deleted]
So sad. Parents want someone to blame for this accident.
that’s a really long and painful way to die.
Everyone turned on this boys family. Even the investigators who initially were on their side.
The family really didn’t want to accept anything that suggested it was an accident. So it went a little conspiratorial.
New fear unlocked.
This case has bothered me for years.
Terrifying
Never climb into a space headfirst. In fact, never climb into a small space at all.
>johnson’s family later hired a private pathologist, who claimed the cause was blunt force trauma
That pathologist the family paid only found a 2 cm bruise and wouldn’t let the finding be peer reviewed, he never went to court for the family to argue this finding, and he never has given a medically feasible explanation as to how it would’ve caused Kendrick’s death.
My mom essentially died this way in her bed. A complication of younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Finding her was devastating. She died exactly a week later.