The tragic death of a kindergartner on a Moscow playground was likely caused by suffocation, not brain trauma as was reported earlier, Interfax reported.

Three-year-old Anya died Monday while playing outside her kindergarten on Khoroshyovsky Shosse. Initially investigators thought she had broken vertebrae in a fall while on a slide, but on Tuesday a hospital source told Interfax that the girl died of suffocation.

The source said another child seems to have stepped on the girl's scarf when she fell, thereby pinching her carotid artery, which supplies blood to the brain.

The kindergarten teacher watching the children told Lifenews.ru that the girl went pale but that there was no loud noise when she fell.

"When Anya went [down the slide], I saw that she was pale. There didn't seem to have been a crash — the slide is plastic," 27-year-old Natalya Chernetsova said.

"I picked her up, laid her on the snow, unbuttoned her [coat]. I thought, who knows, maybe she doesn't have enough air. Then I ran to the nurse," she said.

Investigators have ordered a forensic study into the girl's death, Interfax reported.