Malnutrition-Related Murder

A vegan woman convicted of murder in the malnutrition death of her young son was convicted on Monday to life in jail.

Sheila O’Leary, 39, whose family observed a stringent vegan diet, was convicted in June on six charges, first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse and two counts of child neglect, in the death of Ezra O’Leary.

Her sentencing in Lee County, Florida, had earlier been delayed four times. She displayed no feeling as the verdict was read out, and told the judge she didn’t wish to make a statement.

Her husband, Ryan Patrick O’Leary, remains in prison while awaiting trial on the same charges.

Investigators said the couple, who lived in Cape Coral, told them the family consumed only raw fruit and vegetables, although the toddler also was fed breast milk.

A police report said that the 18-month-old boy weighed 17 pounds and was the size of a seven-month-old infant when he perished in September 2019.

Investigators said the couple had two other children, ages 3 and 5, who were also underweight.

Amira Fox, the state attorney, said the two endured severe neglect.

Court records show that a fourth child had been returned to her birth father during an earlier malnutrition case in Virginia.

Doctors found Ezra hadn’t been fed for a week by the time he perished.

Sheila and Ryan, who have also been charged with murder and are awaiting trial, called 911 after Ezra stopped breathing.

Paramedics pronounced the toddler dead at the scene. They also examined the couple’s older three children.

The couple were charged in December 2019 after Ezra’s cause of death was announced.

No pictures have ever been released revealing what state the child was in when he perished, but prosecutors at Sheila’s trial described a skinny child who frequently cried, and that she decided to ignore his cries. She didn’t need a scale to see his bones.

Sara Miller, Assistant State Attorney said she didn’t need a scale to hear his cry.

The couple also had a three-year-old and a five-year-old who were severely underweight.

Their skin was yellow and one suffered such poor dental hygiene that their teeth were black.

Sheila also has an 11-year-old daughter from a prior relationship but her health was vastly better than that of the other children, due to her spending time with her father in Virginia and eating a proper diet.

But this wasn’t about veganism, it was about them not being fed at all. The toddler hadn’t eaten in weeks.

The child was being given food that even if the amount had been enough, he would have perished regardless.

We all want our children to be healthy, but a strict diet isn’t one of them, but there are aficionados out there that appear to learn from each other. The internet is inhabited by zealous fools who seem to link all types of useless studies to prove their point, and people who want to believe it, will believe it, and then they will spew their idiocy onto other people, it’s called the media and advertisement conditioning, and I wonder what Vegans will spin on this one? And what lame justifications they’ll come up with to try to shift the blame away from the Vegan lifestyle.

But the spin on this was that a toddler was being fed on a Vegan diet, but this poor child hadn’t been fed for weeks, so the article should have been focused on how this mother was starving her children and not that they happened to be vegan.