Riverside County parents convicted of second-degree murder in diabetic daughter’s death

Parents convicted in diabetic daughter’s death

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The parents of a 17-year-old girl who slipped into a diabetic coma and died were convicted of second-degree murder on Wednesday.

Gregory and Yvonne Latham also were each found guilty of felony willful child endangerment, the Riverside County district attorney’s office said.

Nanette Latham was found unresponsive in the family’s squalid mobile home in Cabazon in 2006. The girl had Type 1 diabetes which required her to take insulin, prosecutors said. The girl went into cardiac arrest en route to the hospital where doctors found her blood glucose level to be 1295, more than twice the level at which someone could go into a diabetic coma.

Prosecutor Burke Strunsky told jurors during the trial that Nanette spent the last four days of her life starving and in a mental fog, wearing a wet diaper, because her parents didn’t call paramedics. They finally called 911 after she stopped breathing.

“This was a case of severe neglect in which a girl died a slow and painful death within arms reach of her parents,” Strunsky said.

Defense attorneys argued that the girl’s parents had tried their best to care for their daughter and thought she had the flu.

Neighbors of the Lathams told authorities that they tried to visit Nanette during the days before her death but were denied access, prosecutors said. One offered to provide the Lathams a ride to the hospital for Nanette but was turned down, according to prosecutors.

Each faces 15 years to life in prison. They are scheduled to be sentenced on April 30.