Mother charged with using M&M's to kill daughter

One of the strangest murder weapons I've ever heard of being used to kill someone!


Story:

A woman accused of feeding M&Ms that contained traces of peanuts to her disabled and allergic eight-year-old has pleaded not guilty to an upgraded charge of second-degree murder in the child's death.

Veronica Cirella, 31, of Plainview, was ordered held without bail in the July 23 death of her daughter, Julie, who was found only hours before she was set to be a flower girl in a cousin's wedding. Cirella had previously been charged with manslaughter.

Attorney William Keahon implored the Nassau County judge to release his client on bail, contending an autopsy has failed to determine a cause of death. But the judge cited Cirella's suicide attempt the day her daughter died and the fact that Cirella is now facing a potential life sentence as reasons to hold her in custody until her trial.

"I've never seen an indictment for murder, intentional murder, where the medical examiner cannot even give a causation of death, nor can he even say it's a homicide. It's bizarre," Keahon told reporters outside the Long Island courthouse.

Read full story on CBS

It just saddens me that on top of the apparent accidental death of her child, and her attempted suicide attempt, she now has to suffer at the hands of the over-zealous authorities, who seem to be hell-bent on finding any possible reason to criminalize us!

She was a loving mother, dealing for many years with a difficult situation, but I see no evidence that there was any deliberate attempt to harm or kill her daughter.

Investigating is fair enough but this 'charging' people with heinous crimes just seems unacceptable to me.

Looks to me like the coroner has his job cut out for him. The story stated that the mother wrote in her suicide note (Exhibit A) that once she realized the M&M's had peanuts in them, she gave the child Benydryl to counteract it. The autopsy should clarify this ( Exhibit B), if it did happen, and the charges should be dropped.

Sounds like a terrible mistake that she deeply regrets. Hence the suicide attempt. Sounds like the judge is either trigger happy to convict or he's concerned that she'll try to take her life again if out of jail. I didn't see anything in the article about her being on a suicide watch though.