Around New England

University Blames Student for Choking To Death in School Pancake-Eating Contest

March 14, 2019

A 20-year-old college student who choked to death during a school-sanctioned pancake-eating contest has only herself to blame, a lawyer for the school said.

Caitlin Nelson was eating as many pancakes as she could during the March 2017 charity contest at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut when she began struggling to breathe, according to the Connecticut Post. Emergency responders said the pancake paste in her throat was “like concrete” and that they couldn’t dislodge it, the Connecticut Post reports.

She later died at a hospital from brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation.

The family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

But a lawyer for the school said in court papers that Nelson’s “injuries and damages were caused in whole or in part by [her] own carelessness and negligence,” according to the Connecticut Post.

Nelson’s father was a police officer for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey who died during the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.