Australian girl, 6, dies in freak skipping rope accident at family home

An Australian girl, 6, has died after a freak skipping rope accident in her backyard.

"She was playing with the swing set and got tangled in the skipping rope," Nine News quoted police officer Margaret Schulz as saying.

The girl was found unconscious by family members swing set at her home in Bairnsdale, Victoria at 4:30 p.m.

Schulz would only say that the girl had been playing with a skipping rope when the "terrible accident" occurred.

News.com.au quoted Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen as saying she suffered cardio-respiratory arrest.

She was treated by paramedics at the scene and on the way to Bairnsdale Hospital, where she died.

Her death was not being treated as suspicious, The Age newspaper added.

Nor is it the only tragedy involving a skipping rope this year.

In late June, a Rockland, Maine boy, 5, had his hand ripped off in a freak accident involving a skipping rope and a car.

According to the Daily Mail, the boy was sitting in a car with one end of the rope wrapped around his wrist and the other dangled out the window.

The rope caught on another vehicle, severing the boy's hand.

In 2007, a six-year-old boy from Manchester, England, died after being hanged in an apparent accident while playing with a skipping rope in his yard.

The Guardian wrote that the boy was discovered by his mother in an upstairs bedroom of the family's terraced home, where he had been playing with his sister.