5-year-old girl strangled by swing set in Colorado

A 5-year-old girl died in a Colorado hospital after suffering brain trauma from rope strangulation on her garden swing set, authorities said.

Aurora Masters was playing outside with a toy slide and the swing at her family's Fort Collins house when the incident occurred last week. She was rushed to Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, where she died on Saturday.

“She pulled her little plastic slide over to where her swing was and somehow got caught up in the swing, and the swing strangled her,” Aurora’s great-aunt Brenda Kennedy, who organized a GoFundMe after the girl was hospitalized, told Denver Fox affiliate KDVR.

The Fort Collins Police Department told USA Today Tuesday that they responded to the scene to provide medical care and that the incident has been ruled a tragic accident.

The Larimer County Coroner's Office has not yet released the official cause of death.

After treatment in the pediatric intensive care unit, the family decided Saturday to pull Aurora from life support.

“We had some tests done today to see where we are. Aurora was without oxygen, and that caused her brain to swell. An MRI today confirmed that the swelling was significant enough that it will not go down, and we have made the difficult decision to transition Aurora to end-of-life care and organ donation,” Ms. Kennedy wrote on the GoFundMe page.

Money donated will go to a life celebration for Aurora, with the remainder donated elsewhere in her name, her family told KDVR-TV.