Two-year-old dies at home

MILO—Maxwell J. Bayer, 2, died Sunday, Nov. 3, after being found hanging unconscious in a bedroom closet from a shoe string tied around his neck. The death has been ruled accidental.
“We have determined no foul play, and this is a heartbreaking accident,” Yates County Sheriff Ron Spike said. “Kids can strangle or become entrapped in the most unexpected ways, and this has similarities to deaths from mobiles, window blind or curtain cords a child gets caught in.”
At 10:55 a.m. Sunday, the sheriff’s deputies and emergency first responders were called to the boy’s home at 3291 Hoyt Road in Milo for an unconscious 2-year-old boy reported to the 911 center. He was taken to Soldiers and Sailors Hospital by the Penn Yan Ambulance, where he was pronounced dead at 11:34 a.m. Coroner Brian Murphy ordered the body to be taken to the Monroe County Medical Examiner for a forensic autopsy, who determined the cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation of the string ligature.
Preliminary investigation indicates at the time of the incident, mother Alyssa Chapin, 23, and three children were present in the home, while father Thomas Bayer Jr. was out. The children Maxwell, Mason Bayer (twins) and their sister Myah Chapin, 5, had been upstairs playing. After 20 minutes, Alyssa went to check on them and discovered Maxwell hanging unconscious in a bedroom closet from a shoe string around his neck that appeared to be tied by both ends to a clothes pipe and been played with.