Sometimes, there’s a difference between a coroner and a medical examiner. A medical examiner will more likely be a doctor.
This does not seem to me like a lot of water over 4 hours. His system should have been able to handle it. Something else went wrong here.
Maybe a trip to the emergency room in the case of dark urine.
The foaming at the mouth may have been due to a seizure caused by hyponatremia.
a 41 y.o. sargent? He should have killed himself. I was an e-6 at 25
The child was 11 years old. The excerpt didn’t include that fact and I wanted to see if they made a toddler or an almost adult drink 3 quarts of water over 4 hours. The age was in the middle of that range.
My sons could chug 0.7 liters no problem at that age...they would be performing at their peak after drinking it...and definitely they would not die.
Hyponatremia can cause seizure. Patients who seize can bite their tongue etc.
3 liters of water in a little kid in 4 hours is a pretty hefty water intake.
Fatal?
Easy enough to determine at autopsy.
Serum sodium level.
Serum osmolality.
Army infantry soldiers, combat engineers, etc., are trained to drink until urine is clear. That was in a manual during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Forced drinking in hot weather was common, too. At times, when in initial training in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (don’t recall the wet bulb at the time, but it was high), each man in my unit was forced to drink four quarts of hot canteen water per hour.
No, the kids mentioned in the news story weren’t in the Army, but that’s beside the point. Their father was doing was he was taught to do for the boys health, correct or incorrect. Chances are that a doctor had also told him and/or his wife to make sure that the boy drank plenty of water every day, if he had a urological problem.
Water: How much should you drink every day?
Mayo Clinic
https://www.mayoclinic.org/water/art-20044256
———————Begin quote-———————
So how much fluid does the average, healthy adult living in a temperate climate need? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is:
About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids for men
About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women
BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!
The father, a military man stationed at Ft Carson, should have taken his son to doctors at Evans Army Community Hospital, and not forced the kid to drink any certain amount of water.
Why can’t we put these people to death?
Hereditary urinary problem. There you go. Wondering if it’s really water poisoning, or really because his compromised system couldn’t take it.
And the woman was stepmother, not mother. Father has a screwgie face.
Horrible all around.
BTW what’s up with the comment on women’s studies?
There’s no way that much water would kill anyone. There has to be more to the story. They write the story like the parents of course are the bad guys. Always.
It must’ve been the fluoride in the water that killed him! (sarc.)
The article says that the kid suffered from a hereditary urological problem and wore a diaper to bed.