Ten Year Old, Arrested for Giving Food to Terri Schiavo, Apologizes

LifeSite ^ | August 31, 2005

[NYer]

LifeSiteNews.com

Wednesday August 31, 2005

Ten Year Old Arrested for Giving Food to Terri Schiavo Apologizes

TAMPA BAY, August 31, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ten year-old Joshua Heldreth, the eldest of eight children, was arrested on Good Friday of this year for trespassing while attempting to bring a drink of water to Miss Terri Schaivo.  Days later Schiavo died of intentional dehydration.  In court Joshua pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 hours of community service and ordered to write an apology for his actions.

The boy whose arrest photo was splashed on front pages of newspapers across the nation wrote in his apology letter, "I was arrested on Good Friday for trespassing on the hospice center's property . . . Not giving Mrs. Shiavo (sic) food or water was wrong.  The reason I had to go on your property was because Jesus would do the same thing.  It made me sad that she was so thirsty and it made Jesus sad too.  I knew she would die without water and I am called by Jesus to be a defender of the defenceless.  So I had to go on your property to try to bring her a drink."

Joshua added, "I am sorry that you didn't like that and wouldn't allow me to help save her life and one day you will have to tell God why.  I won't be able to help you then like I tried to help her. I will pray for you every day . . ."

LifeSiteNews.com caught up with Joshua's father Scott Heldreth today.  Scott told LifeSiteNews.com he is very proud of his son.  "My son has amazed me through this whole thing," said Heldreth.  The proud father said it was his son's own initiative to attempt to give the starving woman a glass of water, and despite the warning of his parents that he'd be arrested, the boy insisted.  "He was the one who begged us to go down, because he wanted to give her a glass of water . . . We explained that police will never let you help . . . you'll be arrested, but he went anyways."

Pro-life leader Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Save America told LifeSiteNews.com that the whole pro-life movement shares Heldreth's pride in his son.  Benham recalls the reaction of Heldreth on Good Friday as he watched his son being arrested: "When that all took place Scott was weeping, this father was weeping tears of joy seeing his son not only talk the Christian talk but walk the walk."

While the apology letter has been submitted, Heldreth told LifeSiteNews.com he's not completely sure it will be accepted.

See Joshua's full handwritten apology letter here:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005_docs/JoshuaApolog...

[DBeers]

Way to exploit a child for a political cause - what a wonderful father....

Get a clue -religious cause... NOT inspired by secular politics like YOUR comment.

[DBeers]

I quote your eloquent post# 515 found here:

Big church halts support of ministries - Stone Mountain provides anti-Christian commentary

The bible was a book written by a bunch of men back in the day. Jesus was a man who lived and died back in the day. I understand that a lot of people believe that there is more significant meaning to both, but I personally don't happen to believe that there is.

I revise my earlier statement to you which assumed you possessing better character... Your comments on this thread are not politically based -they are based in anti-Christian bigotry as are the majority of your postings on any topic that provides you even the most obtuse opportunity to serve up your anti-Christian slant...

You no longer garner my assumed respect nor, in my opinion, any credibility on any religious subject as you are tainted -your intent evil...

[BykrBayb]

Thank you for pointing that out. I've sensed an anti-Christian bias from all of the advocates of forced euthanasia, but it's helpful to see confirmation. Some of them pretend to be Christians, while at the same time lashing out against Christian values. I've actually seen a couple of people pretending to be devout Jews who support a new holocaust, or maybe even another Holocaust. It's sickening.

[DBeers]

Thank you for pointing that out. I've sensed an anti-Christian bias from all of the advocates of forced euthanasia...

LOL - it is both funny and sad... Sad that these kooks have an avenue to preach anti-Christian bigotry and funny that they think it is not noiced...

-suggest you stay away from any evolution/ID threads -they too provide innocuous avenue for anti-Christians to surreptitiously purvey their craft...

[BykrBayb]

I've stumbled on them a couple times. I hadn't realized Evolution was a religion, and Darwin is hailed as a god, until I saw his Kool-Aid-drinking followers on one of those threads. They're creepy!

[an amused spectator]

I didn't support the murder of Terri Schiavo but using kids in your protest is wrong.

When I was ten years old, I knew the difference between right and wrong.

It appears from this article that the black-robed thug who demanded that the boy abase himself before the feet of the "omnipotent judge" doesn't know the difference between right and wrong.

But it DOES apparently know how to throw its vile weight around in its little drama theatre (courtroom).

[Sun]

"Apologise! Apologise for what? This child shouldn't be punished he should be treated like a hero. What he did was morally right even though it was Murder sanctioned by the judiciary of the state of Florida.

The Judge that ordered this child to apologise is one sick s.o.b."

He certainly is sick, and it is he who should apologize.

[InterestedQuestioner]

What a great guy!

[BykrBayb]

[8mmMauser]

Ping and bump

8mm

(this includes Ohioan from Florida's ping list, v.7-10-05 with personal updates 8/22.)

[Dante3]

BUMP to #269

[Awestruck]

What a great young man! When I read the headline, I was worried, but that's exactly the type of "apology" I would have written.. good for him!

[Awestruck]

"I don't believe a 10-year-old is capable of making these types of decisions and implementing them completely on his own."

How many 10 yr olds do you know? My 7 yr old has an amazing vocabulary and an amazing compassion and need to see right done. She's much more of a go-getter than I am.
She would definitely have marched over there to give Terri a drink.. she listens to the news, she has her own ideas independent of me.. all I've done is give her the basic Christian values, where she takes them is up to her.
In some ways she's a better Christian than I am sometimes..

[Sun]

Thanks for showing us the handwritten note.

Isn't this unconstitutional for a judge to FORCE a person to apologize when they are not sorry?

It seems to be against "free speech," or the Bill of Rights, to me.

[T'wit]

Certainly Darwinism is a religion, with its own litany and rituals. Its faithful all know by heart such sacred readings as, "Evolution is not a theory, it's a scientific fact," and "fundamentalists believe the earth was created in 4,004 B.C."

The Darwinists were the hip liberal set during the Scopes ("Monkey") Trial in the 1920s, hooting and jeering at the fundamentalist yokels. Today, they are the yokels, reciting their precious credo regardless of evidence. For example, in the Scopes Trial proceedings, to ridicule the 4,004 BC date of creation, they gave the age of the earth at 60 million years. THIS was "scientific." Today, the figure given is something like 15,000 million years, a figure 250 times as large as Darwinist gospel of the 1920s. The Darwinists are not the least embarrassed by this gigantic OOPS. The got the Biblical dating wrong, too, in attributing it to the Bishop of Ussher. In fact the date was given by one of the greatest scientists ever, Johannes Kepler, in Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596).

Another embarrassment the Darwinists would sooner leave in the closet is the close and conscious connection of Darwinism to the rise of the Nazis. It's a short step from "survival of the fittest" to calling yourself the fittest -- the master race. Nazi thinking followed the early Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, a personal friend and publicist of Darwin. Communists (and liberals and other collectivists and non-believers of many stripes) are Darwinists too, although not quite as flamboyantly as the Nazis.

Darwinism, being a naturalist religion, cannot account for good and evil. The Darwinists unknowingly pay the rest of us the enormous compliment of being fully human when they accuse us of evil. (It's always evil Christian businessmen who pollute, y'know.) It was Adam's Fall to know of good and evil. But those who do not know of good and evil are no children of Adam. They are not human at all.

[Mr. Silverback]

I didn't say he didn't get help, I said he may have made the decision on his own. Where did I say he drove his own little ten year old self to Florida?

Reading is fundamental. Try it sometime.

[Dante3]

I could see my daughter doing it also.

However, some people on this thread possibly have pretty nasty children who are headed for serious trouble - and they are bitter and resentful. Or they themselves are miserable people lacking compassion.

[cyn]

"I knew she would die without water and I am called by Jesus to be a defender of the defenceless.  So I had to go on your property to try to bring her a drink."

For the love of Christ compels us, for we are convinced that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

Joshua added, "I am sorry that you didn't like that and wouldn't allow me to help save her life and one day you will have to tell God why.  I won't be able to help you then like I tried to help her. I will pray for you every day . . ."

bump.

. . . "While the apology letter has been submitted, Heldreth told LifeSiteNews.com he's not completely sure it will be accepted." . . .

"So there, nyah, nyah, nyah." Let the small-minded heartless Godlessness continue.

[Stone Mountain]

I didn't say he didn't get help, I said he may have made the decision on his own. Where did I say he drove his own little ten year old self to Florida? Reading is fundamental. Try it sometime.

Well, your condescending crap aside, my point was that he was not capable of carrying off this entire escapade without help. Even if I were to believe that he came up with this idea all by himself without any prompting, it's clear to me that his parents encouraged him to go out there and get arrested. I think that's a bad idea. Apparently you don't.

[Stone Mountain]

My 7 yr old has an amazing vocabulary and an amazing compassion and need to see right done. She's much more of a go-getter than I am. She would definitely have marched over there to give Terri a drink.. she listens to the news, she has her own ideas independent of me.. all I've done is give her the basic Christian values, where she takes them is up to her. In some ways she's a better Christian than I am sometimes..

Would you have driven your 7-year-old 600 miles to the hospital knowing that she would be arrested if she trespassed on hospital grounds?