posted March 28, 2008 08:12 PM            

An autopsy showed Madeline Neumann died on Sunday of diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that left too little insulin in her body, Everest metro police chief Dan Vergin said. She had been ill for a month, with symptoms of nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness, the chief said.

The girl's mother, Leilani Neumann, said that she and her family believe in the Bible and that healing comes from God, but that they do not belong to an organized religion or faith, are not fanatics and have nothing against doctors.

"We just noticed tiredness within the past two weeks," said Leilani.

"And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering." she said.

Family members elsewhere called authorities to seek help for the girl. "My sister-in-law, she's very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors," the girl's aunt told a sheriff's dispatcher in a call from California.

"And she called my mother-in-law today and she explained to us that she believes her daughter's in a coma now and she's relying on faith." she said.

The dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent. "Please," the woman replied. "I mean, she's refusing. She's going to fight it. We've been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week now."

posted March 29, 2008 06:41 AM            

But I wouldn't want to rush up with a judgement on this one. After a postmortem we know she had treatable diabetes, no-one knew that at the time. Tired and off your food could be a lot of ailments, and quite reasonably something you'd expect someone to get better from in time. Religion seems a bit of a red herring in this story. You could put in a different religion or anything, really.

When she took a turn for the worst more sensible people would have called for a doctor. I'll say that much. They seem to have been in denial. But she was 11, I wonder what she said to them?