Homicide Charges for Parents Who Prayed as Daughter Died

Parents who prayed as their 11-year-old daughter died of untreated diabetes will be charged with second-degree reckless homicide, the Marathon County district attorney said Monday.

Madeline Kara Neumann, of Weston, Wis., is shown working on chalk art during the summer of 2007 at...

Madeline Kara Neumann, of Weston, Wis., is shown working on chalk art during the summer of 2007 at downtown Wausau's Chalk Fest. Neumann died Sunday, March 23, 2008, after her parents prayed for healing rather than getting medical help for a treatable form of diabetes.

(AP Photo/Wausau Daily Herald,Butch McCartney)
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"The failure to seek medical intervention created an unreasonable and substantial risk of death or great bodily harm," District Attorney Jill Falstad said.

She announced the charges Monday during a news conference at the Everest Metro Police Department with Police Chief Dan Vergin. Vergin has said Dale and Leilani Neumann told investigators their daughter Madeline last saw a doctor when she was 3 to get some shots.

The couple face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Madeline - called Kara by her parents - died Easter Sunday at the family's rural Weston home. An autopsy determined she died from undiagnosed diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body.

The couple's lawyer did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press.

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Leilani Neumann, 40, told AP previously she never expected her daughter to die. The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people and have nothing against doctors, she said.

Dale Neumann, a former police officer, has said he has friends who are doctors. He started CPR "as soon as the breath of life left" his daughter's body, he said.

Madeline, a straight-A student who was being home-schooled, was in good health until she started getting tired about two weeks before she died, her mother has said. When the situation got worse over Easter weekend, "we stayed fast in prayer then," Leilani Neumann said. "We believed that she would recover."

According to a search warrant request, the girl's grandmother told investigators she had been ill for several days, was "very tired," and wanted to be held by her mother. By March 22, Madeline couldn't walk or talk, her grandmother said.

The grandmother said she told Leilani Neumann to take the girl to the doctor but the mother said her daughter "would be fine and God would heal her," the court record said.