The four-year-old that was the center of the national controversy of whether he was suffering from Miller-Dieker Syndrome or child neglect died peacefully yesterday in hospice care at West Florida Hospital.
Read Jaden Markes dies in hospice.
His mother, 19-year-old Erin Markes was arrested in March after staff at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola called authorities about Jaden’s condition. They said the boy was severely underweight, missing his medication and suffering from bed sores.
Markes was charged with child neglect. She insisted she was innocent.
Today, experts say Jaden’s condition was in line with the progression of his disorder – and, in many ways, out of his mother’s control.
The Independent News and IN Your Head Radio championed the mother’s case while the daily newspaper virtually ignored the child’s birth disorder. It is something I never quite can understand how the powers at be at the News Journal can drop a story, especially if we get involved in covering it. Saw the same thing with Escambia County firefighters, city pension and retirements and Mike Whitehead.
Sadly the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office has refused to admit that it made it mistake and has issued a statement standing behind its arrest of Markes. Nancy Grace – on whose show a SRCO spokesman called the case the worse incident of child abuse ever in Santa Rosa County – has yet to apologize or issue a retraction.