Stepmom Chrystal Hunt Convicted of Murder for Salt Poisoning, Beating of Child
Salt poisoning is a crime I haven’t heard much about here in the states. In Britain, it’s something of an epidemic…or, at least, accusations of it are. Petrina Stocker is serving five years for killing her child with salt. Other cases are more controversial, with parents maintaining that the “poisoning” resulted from medications supplied to their ill kids. Susan Hamilton is currently appealing her conviction of salt poisoning. Ian and Angela Gay are fighting a similar conviction. And young mom Marianne Williams was found not guilty of poisoning her son Joshua. Like Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, salt poisoning can be hard to prove - and may ensnare an innocent parent or two in the ensuing hysteria.
Here in the states, though, there seems to be little doubt about Chrystal Hunt’s involvement in her six-year-old son Kyle’s death. A jury in Elko, Nevada has convicted Hunt of first degree murder for killing him with salt, and on several lesser counts of abuse to boot. Hunt’s defense had tried to pin the murder and beatings of Kyle on his father. But the prosecution used forensic evidence to prove that only Chrystal Hunt was around the child in the hours during which he must have been poisoned. Hunt’s defense also insisted that their client didn’t fully “remember” what happened. Jurors didn’t buy that shit, either.
Chrystal Hunt will be sentenced by a judge on January 26th, after a jury failed to determine whether she should get life without parole. During sentencing, Kyle’s sister, Amanda Hunt, brought the room to tears when she said of her sibling: “When I was depressed Kyle would make me feel better. Kyle was a good little brother. I miss him a lot.”
So…where’s Dear Old Dad in all of this? On the lam, of course! Charles Hunt, who showed up to a preliminary hearing drugged out on meth, is wanted on child abuse charges stemming from his wife’s pass-the-blame testimony. Hunt, still considered a resident of Alaska, couldn’t be arrested in Nevada, so authorities are waiting for him to return home and hunting him down there. What asshats. How sad for this boy and his sister that they had to have these parents strung as millstones around their young necks.
(Thanks to hot tipper Patty for the Hunt story)
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15 opinions for Stepmom Chrystal Hunt Convicted of Murder for Salt Poisoning, Beating of Child
Soobs
Dec 6, 2006 at 10:15 am
The father’s been arrested. Finally maybe some peace for the boy.
Soobs
Dec 6, 2006 at 10:16 am
Sorry, here’s the link: http://www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5776621&nav=8faO
robert
Jan 31, 2007 at 5:11 am
is it true shes on life suport in prision?
Willow
Mar 3, 2007 at 10:49 am
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/03/nsalt03.xml
Extract:
“Christian Blewitt collapsed at their home in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in December 2002. He died four days later. Tests showed an abnormally high level of sodium in his blood.
The couple were cleared of murder in 2005 but convicted of manslaughter and were jailed. After 15 months in prison they were freed on bail when the Court of Appeal overturned the verdict and ordered a retrial on charges of manslaughter and cruelty.
Yesterday, at Nottingham Crown Court, they were cleared by a jury of both counts. The prosecution claimed that the couple had force-fed Christian up to six full teaspoons of salt as a punishment for being naughty.”
What puzzles me is that it is reported here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4039993.stm that: “He died in December 2002 of brain injuries and salt poisoning.
Susan Caynak was working as a sister at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, West Midlands, when the toddler arrived.
She told the jury: “His eyes were half closed, half open. He was unresponsive and initially, at that point, I thought he was dead.”
Sister Caynak said an abnormal urine test was recorded and that Christian was administered saline through a syringe. “”
If Christian was ill because of salt excess, WHY ON EARTH WAS SALINE ADMINISTERED TO HIM BY SYRINGE? - THIS COULD ONLY COMPOUND THE PROBLEM, SURELY? - And was this saline measured and taken into account as having contributed to the excess of salt in his body?
Dr David Murray
Mar 9, 2007 at 4:26 pm
It was given to him in a drip infusion. What he needed was water so that his kidneys could start to get rid of the salt but it is dangerous to do this too quickly by giving water alone. Naturally the salt in the drip would be accounted for . By this time Christian was gravely ill with brain damage and heart damage and had difficulty clinging on to life. The defense thought he had the first case to be recorded of a “re set osmostat” rather as if his brain had suddenly decided it could no longer control salt balance. We’re seeing it quite a lot in the UK, finding an obscure medic who can concoct an obscure disease to get you out of jail. An”OJ” defence.
Willow
Mar 10, 2007 at 1:07 am
To say “it is dangerous to do this too quickly by giving water alone” seems to imply that the only way to give water alone is to give it “too quickly”. This cannot be the case. Surely it could be given as slowly as is necessary and be rigorously monitored. I would certainly need more evidence/explanation/proof that giving this little boy sodium in a drip can be defended. Obviously I do not mean that any harm done by that drip was intentional, but I do think that saline drips are often given too routinely and I know that they do cause deaths sometimes.
Salt is SO harmful to small children. - I am suggesting that there should be much more caution - EXTREME caution - in adding to the sodium content of the body by putting a child onto a saline drip.
I agree that the defence medical opinion is dubious in this instance. But I also do not believe that Mr and Mrs May gave Christian salt to punish him. I am sure they did not harm him.
I still fear that the saline drip may have been the cause of his death.
Dr David Murray
Mar 10, 2007 at 2:35 am
Don’t forget the little boy was what we call ‘decerebrate’ when he arrived at hospital and saw a consultant who thought there was no chance of recovery. He was deeply unconscious and had head injuries and was sent on to the Children’s Hospital.He was dying long before a drip was put up. There is no problem with salt in itself . Its the primaeval ’sea’ we swim with in our blood.It’s having salt with no water that’s the problem and that’s why salt is as you say so harmful to little children. They get dehydrated so quickly and then the salt drags water out of the brain cellls to try and compensate and soon the baby dies.This child was killed with salt but we’ll never know for sure.
Willow
Mar 10, 2007 at 3:05 am
I agree that we will never know for sure.
But I do not agree with your statement “It’s having salt with no water that’s the problem and that’s why salt is as you say so harmful to little children.” - Added salt is harmful to children even when it is dissolved in water or present in food as in processed food. Too many sodium ions in the bloodstream cause great thirst so that the subject drinks water to reduce the concentration of sodium in the bloodstream and then, if the blood vessels are weak and immature, as with a child, (or compromised by prescribed steroids, for example, as possibly in an adult)the excess sodium and the water associated with it are not easily excreted, partly because also, I assume, of the immaturity of a child’s kidneys.
The blood vessels then become distended and in a VERY small child, as with the baby in the 1990s who accidentally died because his parents fed him mashed potato with gravy (which must have contained salt, as gravy does), not knowing that he should not have been fed anything containing salt, an overstretched blood vessel can burst, and the baby die of, say, a sort of stroke if it is in the area of the brain.
Dr David Murray
Mar 10, 2007 at 10:28 am
We are both saying the same thing that when babies get too much salt they desperatly need water to balance their fluid compartments and in those with a compromised cardiovascular system or renal incapacity this expansion of fluid can lead to higher blood pressure and even heart failure. When mothers poison their children they often deprive them of water to such an extent that the child will drink from fish tanks. They then offer them high salt drinks or put it down a tube if medically trained. There was a disaster some years ago when sugar was replaced with salt in a hospital and six out of fourteen infants died with widespread brain haemorrhages. Salt is vital for life but like so many things not good for us in excess.
Willow
Mar 10, 2007 at 10:55 am
Salt is vital to life in the sense that food and drink are vital to life. - Since sodium and chloride ions are present in all food and in all drink, including plain water from a tap or from a stream, we will none of us ever be without salt if we eat and drink. - And if we do not eat and drink then we have more immediate problems than the need for salt…(o:
Cavemen and women had no recourse to the saltpot, and our ancestors lived for millennia on low sodium, high potassium food intake, so I reckon that is the sort of diet on which out species evolved and on which we best thrive, and I believe babies and children should be protected from added salt for as long as possible. Added salt is unnecessary in our food, and I believe that some of the longest-living human communities are those which do not eat salt, other than that which is naturally present in the food.
I believe that diseases commonly attributed in the Western world to ageing, are in the main really attributable to sodium retention in salt-sensitive people - the diseases of obesity, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, enlarged heart, type 2 diabetes, varicose veins. arthritis, osteoporosis, kidney impairment, liver disease, most cancers, etc. etc.
Dr David Murray
Mar 11, 2007 at 3:33 am
Whatever the aetiology of the diseases you mention we must remember that salt amongst other poisons are used to damage or kill babies and infants(and even older children) and it doesn’t help them if manipulative lawyers can persuade juries that the brian damaged bleeding infant has over the course of a few hours developed a disorder of such obscurity that no other cases have been reported(as in the case you reported).We have had children dying of ’septicaemia’ in ten minutes after happily taking a feed in a bouncy chair and others suffering from ‘tempory’ brittle bone disease, a diagnosis of such absurdity that only a lawyer could have believed it.
Now we have journalists doubting the existence of child abuse and paediatricians reluctant to involve themselves in child protection work. We even had a mob who thought that a paediatrician was the same as a paedophile. Someone has to speak for the children. They have no advocate.
Willow
Mar 11, 2007 at 4:31 am
I agree.
We need to encourage reasoned, reflecting thought; we need open and open-minded discourse; we need an end to absolutist unreasoning. And we need both ’sides’ to contribute fully to a sincere and whole-hearted effort to unravel the contributary causes to tragedies like the untimely death of little Christian, who was very clearly NOT suffering from sodium retention at the time of that delightful video of him that has been shown many times on the television. And where there is fault, lessons need to be learned. - Protecting others in the future from such harm would be one way of atoning for Christian’s suffering and death.
Dr David Murray
Mar 11, 2007 at 3:00 pm
You are so right. I Iook into his trusting eyes and wonder whether he would be alive today if he hadn’t been passed from pillar to post. It’s not fair on him that we should think it sufficient to come up with a ‘possible’ reason why he died but not the ‘real’ reason why he died. Reflective thought. Not much of that around nowadays.
delta
Mar 21, 2007 at 1:27 am
nice site
cathyjulee
Nov 15, 2007 at 7:22 am
See this on http://www.biloves.com.
Why are their so many parents of this kind?
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