Mommy blogger Lacey Spears is accused of killing her 5-year-old son, Garnett-Paul Spears, by feeding him dangerous amounts of sodium.
The boy died Jan. 23 after hospital staff found him unresponsive with lethal levels of sodium.
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According to The Washington Post, Spears faces charges of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter in what authorities think may be a case of the psychiatric illness Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which a parent makes her child sick to get attention or sympathy.
Spears, 26, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.
“She really didn’t show any emotion,”
Westchester Police Capt. Christopher Calabrese said, according to CBS New York. “She was kind of stoic when she came here. I think that she knew the grand jury was going on. She anticipated this happening, and she turned herself in with her attorney.”
Prosecutors allege that Spears did Internet searches to research the effects of salt and administered the sodium into a tube in the boy's stomach in a private hospital bathroom,
The Journal News reported. They believe she may have poisoned the boy at least twice on Jan. 17 and 19.
The indictment came after months of investigation in New York, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. Spears frequently wrote about her son’s medical struggles on social media, and authorities suspect Spears subjected her son to medical abuse for years, The Journal News reported.
"I'm happy they got her and I do believe that she's had this problem for years and that he's been suffering at her hands. I really wish we could have prevented this because there were signs,” former nurse Ginger Dabbs-Anderson said, according to The Journal News. "Maybe the hospitals should have caught it, maybe her parents should have caught it, maybe those people closest to her should have caught it. She put all over Facebook how wonderful she was. She had us all snowed, she had us all believing she was wonderful. But obviously not."
Spears faces a maximum of 25 years to life in prison on the murder charge and up to 25 years for manslaughter.
Twitter users shared their outrage.
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