Tag: poisoning

CLAYTON • A jury agreed Thursday with prosecutors that a woman kept her 9-year-old son gravely ill for nearly a year by secretly poisoning him with a cocktail of prescription medications until doctors uncovered her scheme.

A St. Louis County jury found Rachel Kinsella, 36, of Meadville, Mo., about 100 miles northeast of Kansas City, guilty Thursday in St. Louis County Court of charges of first-degree assault and child endangerment. She was accused of keeping her son’s doctors in St. Louis and Kansas City in the dark about medications she was poisoning her son with for much of 2014.

The jury deliberated for 90 minutes. After the verdict was read, relatives and prosecutors hugged in the courtroom, proclaiming, “He’s safe! He’s safe!”

Kinsella brought Patrick to the hospital weekly for treatments, and while he was there she visited pharmacies in the area to stockpile prescription drugs he was already getting at the hospital, authorities said. Kinsella also sought drugs and treatment from a hospital in Kansas City but didn’t inform doctors in St. Louis and didn’t tell Kansas City doctors about her son’s care in St. Louis.

“She manufactured illnesses,” Assistant Prosecutor Sheila Whirley told jurors Thursday. “People don’t want to believe that a mother would do this because mothers are supposed to plant the seeds of love that grow for a lifetime.”

While under his mother’s care, Patrick suffered seizures, hallucinations and problems walking and breathing. Doctors struggled to diagnose his condition and gave him more than a dozen blood treatments and surgeries. Whirley credited doctors at Children’s Hospital with saving Patrick’s life. Patrick, now 11, is living with his paternal grandparents and has no major health problems, prosecutors and relatives say.

Authorities said Kinsella had rented a home in the 7400 block of Grant Village Drive in Marlborough while Patrick was undergoing care here. She told police she “accidentally” gave her son the wrong medication “on occasion,” but doctors told police the types and amount of drugs found in the boy’s system revealed intentional poisoning.

The medications were meant to treat mental health and seizures, but police have said Kinsella tried to attract attention through her child’s illness in what is known as a caregiver-fabricated illness or Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Her attorneys said the presence of various drugs in Patrick’s system did not prove she was poisoning him.

Patrick was born premature in 2005 and was diagnosed with epilepsy, hydrocephalus and, later, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. One of Kinsella’s attorneys, Gregory Smith, said hospitals near Meadville where Kinsella lived were ill-equipped to handle Patrick’s long-term medical problems. Smith argued that the claim that Kinsella was poisoning her son was false because the hospital had prescribed Patrick nearly two dozen different medications at different times. Smith also said toxicology results did not reveal the amount of each drug in his system.

Smith was disappointed in the verdict. “I have no doubt that she loves her son as much as any parent,” he said.

Patrick’s father died in 2012 without a will, which resulted in the court’s appointing a relative to manage a $275,000 inheritance for the boy. By keeping Patrick sick, a prosecutor suggested at trial, Kinsella could receive payments from that inheritance to care for her son. Kinsella also has a teenage daughter from an earlier marriage.

Patrick’s aunt, Carmen Mallery, provided a statement after the verdict saying, “We are pleased that justice has been served.”

Sheriff’s deputies led Kinsella away in handcuffs Thursday. Sentencing is set for May 26. She faces a potential sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

via:  http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-county-jury-finds-mother-guilty-of-poisoning-/article_5f472ffb-d84d-5c11-8a6c-dfd6f260cedb.html