CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) - A trial is underway near St. Louis over whether a mother accused of poisoning her 9-year-old son for almost a year did it intentionally as a prosecutor claims or whether the woman is wrongly blamed for her son’s medical conditions.
The St. Louis County trial of 36-year-old Rachel Kinsella on charges of first-degree assault and child endangerment began Tuesday, with prosecutor Sheila Whirley telling jurors Kinsella put son Patrick at “death’s door” by poisoning him.
The boy survived - to Whirley, going “from the brink of death to a healthy child. That’s what he is today.”
Authorities allege Kinsella intentionally made her son sick by secretly giving him prescription medication at their home in Marlborough near St. Louis from March 2014 until the following January, when the state took Patrick from her.
Gregory Smith, an attorney for Kinsella, countered to jurors that the mere presence of medication in the boy’s blood does not prove his client poisoned him. Kinsella was doing what she could to care for her son’s numerous health problems, including epilepsy, he said.
Whirley told jurors Kinsella sought treatment for Patrick at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and at Children’s Mercy Kansas City to get anti-seizure medications from both sites, never telling doctors at either hospital.
In January 2015, Patrick was admitted to St. Louis Children’s Hospital in what Dr. Jamie Kondis testified was “almost a comatose state.” The boy also was having seizures, hallucinations and severe coordination loss, Kondis said.
Lab tests revealed three medications not prescribed by St. Louis Children’s Hospital doctors, Kondis said, calling the boy’s condition then “most consistent with abuse.”
Smith has said hospitals near Meadville were not equipped to handle Patrick’s long-term medical problems and that the boy always had a seizure disorder as well as an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation in the brain.
Whirley said Patrick’s father died in 2012 without a will, resulting in Patrick’s aunt becoming the court-appointed manager of a $275,000 inheritance for the boy. By keeping Patrick sick, Whirley suggested, Kinsella could get inheritance payments to care for her son.
“If (Patrick) died, she would be the likely heir,” Whirley said.
The boy no longer needs a feeding tube and though he still has epilepsy, he has not had a seizure since he was removed from his mother’s custody, Whirley said.
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, https://www.stltoday.com
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