Posted on 03/27/2023 5:29:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
Mother sentenced after 8-year-old son weighing 30 pounds found searching dumpster for food (Oklahoma County Detention Center)
EDMOND, Okla. (WKRC) - A mother in Oklahoma was sentenced Thursday for starving her young son.
Court records show Akemi Cox pleaded guilty to one count of child neglect.
Neighbors called child services back in February of 2021 after seeing the boy digging through a dumpster for food.
A case worker found the eight-year-old was slightly over three feet tall and weighed just 30 pounds.
He reportedly wore clothing made for children around 2.5 years old.
“His stomach is distended, yet he is extremely skinny and his skin is sagging,” the case worker said.
The child was treated at the hospital. While there, an officer offered to buy him food, but Cox refused.
An affidavit states that she even took food away from the boy while he was being treated, claiming it had "too much sugar."
“At a minimum this case is medical neglect, possibly shocking and heinous," a doctor said.
Investigation revealed that the boy had only gained six pounds in seven years.
His parents said they had put him on a "no-sugar diet" and fed him nothing but crackers.
Cox also pleaded no contest to child abuse by injury. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Prior to her arrest, she lost custody of five other children, authorities say.
Her fiancé, Valerio Garcia, was initially charged with child abuse, but the state had that charge dismissed.
She was sentenced to 30 years in prison...............
There are so many safety nets in place for needy families these days that neglectful behavior like this has to be willful.
There is always Meals-on-Wheels or similar programs, WIC, etc., not to mention multiple Christian charities willing to step in. There are really no “poor” in this country.
I was a juror in a similar case about 17 years ago. The child was 13 and weighed 50 lbs. His parents chained him to the bed at night because they said he would run off. Because of one juror we could only convict of attempted child abuse.
I believe he is stunted for the rest of his life. He will always be smaller than his peers.
There is a certain window for growth that he can still get back on track if he gets growth hormones and proper diet, but when that window closes, he’s as big as he will ever be.
I pray that I’m wrong................
It makes recovery from famines difficult (see Africa).
Wanna bet she was getting food stamps for all 6 kids?
EBT nowadays.............
Also ‘sister stations’ owned by the same corporation share stories...................
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Off topic but this reminding me of something.
Years ago I traveled a lot for my job. In the evening I would watch the local news to see what was going on. I began to notice the same stories would appear on different local stations with the same script only with the local reporter reading the script.
For the most part these were “puff pieces” that an industry or company would send to the stations along with the script.
Basically advertisement masquerading as news.
I suppose it is still happening but since I quit watching any broadcast news years ago I don’t know.
She fed him nothing but crackers tho. Certainly she doesn’t understand how the body metabolizes carbs.
Yes, it still happens. Only worse.
We get stations from Pensacola and Mobile.
Sinclair Broadcasting owns the ABC affiliate in Pensacola and
the NBC affiliate in Mobile.
They both use the same Chyron subscription service so they are exactly the same.
It is also used by the CBS affiliate that is not owned by them, so it has the same ‘news’ word for word........................
6 kids?! she shouldn’t be able to continue to reproduce.
You’re right, Local news tends to have those pieces.
Somebody(ies) had one helluva jones!.....................
There’s wrong with a “low” sugar diet, as long as you get sufficient protein and fat. For that matter, crackers, are converted to glucose and if the choleric needs are met are stored as fat on the body.
This kid was was not getting enough protein or carbs.
The old cracker and water diet.
There are quite a few fatties out there who could benefit from a few weeks on that diet plan!
There’s a long list of things she doesn’t understand. Could probably start with “sunrise” and go all day.
no kidding!
Depends on what you mean by recover. Certain physical milestones have been missed and are gone forever. With a carefully laid out diet and supplements you can mitigate the damage but certain problems will always remain. They will show up when he is older. Same for his mental health, he probably will always have a complicated relationship with both food and females which is a bad combination. Certain problems will always remain but they can be smoothed down so they do not leave him unable to function.
Looks like “dark” speech was tested for marketing and coordinated by forces that be.
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