A Tennessee nurse has pleaded guilty to the reckless homicide of a three-year-old with a rare genetic disorder, but she is asking that the court not only give her no jail time, but also let her return to nursing. The child’s mother tells a local news station that it feels like justice is slipping away.
Kayla Andrews was born with a rare genetic disorder known as Moebius Syndrome. The neurological disorder affects the sixth and seventh cranial nerves, leaving those some of those afflicted with Moebius with respiratory problems and assorted other disabilities.
Kayla, who was three years old, was hooked to life-support machines, requiring around the clock, in-home care, according to Fox 8 New Orleans. Her nurse at the time, Demequa Bonds, silenced an alarm on Kayla’s monitoring equipment. That act, prosecutors say, meant that Bonds was not alerted when Kayla’s condition took a turn for the worse and the three-year-old needed immediate, life-saving care.
A nearly year-long investigation followed Kayla’s death, and Bonds was indicted in 2013 on a reckless homicide charge. Bonds pleaded guilty to the charge, but she maintained throughout that she was innocent.
“Did you in any way cause this child to die?” Bonds’ defense attorney asked during the trial.
“No,” Bonds replied, “I did not.”
According to Bonds, she silenced the alarm on Kayla’s equipment in order to keep it from waking up Kayla’s twin sister, who slept in the same room. Bonds says that she was distracted when the alarm went off because she was busy cleaning “a filthy room” in the house.
“There were a couple issues,” Bonds said, “but I worked through them because this wasn’t just my patient; this was my baby too.”
Bonds, currently free on $10,000 bail, is asking that she be allowed to forego jail time. She also requests that her record be expunged, which would allow her to eventually return to nursing.
Kayla’s mother, Christina Andrews, says that she is “extremely disappointed that our legal system allows for something like that.”
“She’s fighting for [her] freedom and for her family,” Andrews told Fox 8 , “and I understand that; we didn’t get the opportunity to fight for Kayla. She took that away from us.”
The judge in Bonds’ case has not yet made a ruling on whether the nurse will be sentenced to jail or not. The sentencing hearing in the case will resume on November 25.
[Images via Fox 8 New Orleans.]