14 DAY TRIAL // A Louisiana mother has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 17-month-old baby boy, who was suffering from Down syndrome and had three holes in his heart.
Police says Erika Wigstrom, 20, confessed to killing her son by injecting Germ-X hand sanitizer into the baby's feeding tube, but claimed she did it as an act of mercy as she wanted to end his suffering.
The infant, named Lucas Ruiz, died of acute alcohol intoxication on January 24, according to Huffington Post. After performing an autopsy, medics found that the boy had a blood-alcohol level of 0.280, which is more than three times the legal driving limit in the country.
The boy's father Cesar Ruiz, is already in prison awaiting trial after a similar attempt to kill his son in October 2012. In that occasion, he supposedly poured rum in the baby's feeding tube while he was in hospital receiving treatment for his heart defect. That caused him seizures and brain damage.
Ruiz confessed to the poisoning at the time and was initially charged with attempted first-degree murder, but the charges were later dropped to second-degree cruelty to a juvenile.
This time, emergency crews responded to Wigstrom's home in Belle Chase on January 24, but found the child breathless and without a pulse. He was later pronounced dead at the Children’s Hospital in New Orleans.
After receiving the autopsy results, detectives interviewed Wigstrom, who allegedly confessed to having injected the ethyl alcohol solution in the baby's feeding tubes the day before he died. She also told police she had been the one who tried to kill the infant in 2012, not Cesar Ruiz, revealing that she gave him perfume, not rum as investigators believed.
Both parents claimed they had turned to such an extreme measure to ease the baby's suffering, but their cruelty cannot be justified in any way.
Investigators reportedly came to the conclusion that the mother had no remorse for what she had done.
“From what I gathered from the detectives, they basically said she [Wigstrom] had no remorse,” Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office Cmdr. Eric Becnel said.
During a bond hearing on Wednesday, the heartless mother broke down in tears when her charge was read. She was accused of first-degree murder and faces life in prison if convicted.
“With the evidence and the age of the child, we believe we have a strong case. It's a tragic situation. I don't know what goes through someone's head, to harm a 17-month-old. I have a 19-month-old myself, and I couldn't put it in my system to do something like that,” Cmdr. Becnel added.