FORT MYERS – A vegan mom who mentioned she and her household adopted a strict weight-reduction plan of solely uncooked vegetables and fruit confronted sentencing on Monday in the malnutrition death of her 18-month-old son.
Sheila O’Leary, 38, was convicted in June on six prices – first-degree homicide, aggravated baby abuse, aggravated manslaughter, baby abuse, and two counts of baby neglect – in the death of Ezra O’Leary. A listening to is ready for Monday afternoon in Lee County.
O’Leary and husband Ryan Patrick O’Leary, who faces trial on the identical prices this month, instructed investigators that the toddler additionally had been fed breast milk. The boy weighed simply 17 kilos and was the dimensions of a seven month previous child, a police report mentioned.
“This child did not eat. He was starved to death over 18 months,” Francine Donnorummo, the particular victims unit chief on the Lee County State Attorney’s Office, mentioned through the trial.
The couple had two different youngsters, ages 3 and 5, who additionally had been malnourished, investigators mentioned. A fourth baby had been returned to her organic father throughout an earlier malnutrition case in Virginia, court docket information present.
Her lawyer confirmed footage of O’Leary with one of her youngsters through the trial, looking for to indicate she by no means supposed to hurt them.
“Does that look like a mom who wants to kill her kid?” lawyer Lee Hollander mentioned. “Just because it happened doesn’t mean she committed a crime.”
Hollander has requested a brand new trial, saying “errors” led to her conviction. If that movement is granted, she mentioned she desires a brand new lawyer, telling the choose in July that her lawyer did not defend her the best way she wished him to.