Homicide, suicide ruled in Point Place hangings

8/17/2013
LCCS case worker Denise Greenblatt, right, and other LCCS employees holding candles during the memorial.   The Fourteenth Annual Child Memorial, designed to remember the ten Lucas County children who died as a result of abuse and neglect in 2012, and 11-year-old Andrew Hassler, killed by his mother in Toledo, Ohio on April 19, 2013.
LCCS case worker Denise Greenblatt, right, and other LCCS employees holding candles during the memorial. The Fourteenth Annual Child Memorial, designed to remember the ten Lucas County children who died as a result of abuse and neglect in 2012, and 11-year-old Andrew Hassler, killed by his mother in Toledo, Ohio on April 19, 2013.

An 11-year-old boy hanged by his mother was “probably sedated” before he died, according to the Lucas County Coroner’s Office.

Andrew Hassler and his mother, Kim Hassler, 48, were found dead April 15, both hanged inside a Point Place garage. A toxicology report that was released Friday shows that both had diphenhydramine, an antihistamine, in their systems when they died.

The ruling calls the Hassler youth’s death a homicide and his mother’s death a suicide.