A 12-year-old Texas cheerleader, Miranda Sipps, died after her parents didn't take her to the hospital. The pre-teen was severely injured for four days. Instead of calling emergency services, her parents tried to treat her with smoothies and vitamins.
Local police arrested the Texas cheerleader's mother, 36-year-old Denise Balbaneda, and stepdad, 40-year-old Gerald Gonzales. They charged the couple with first-degree felony charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury by omission. The cheerleader's mother finally called emergency services after days when it appeared Sipps was dying.
Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward shared new details on the matter. He said that Sipps' mother didn't really show remorse for her accused actions, according to his team.
"Not like you, or I, or any of us probably would," Soward said. "The mother, as my investigators said, not really at all."
"The investigation revealed the parents failed to seek medical assistance for the girl, even though she was mentally and physically incapacitated and non-responsive," the sheriff's office said in a press release. "It appears the mother finally called 9-1-1 when the girl went into respiratory distress."
Texas Cheerleader Dies
Soward also discussed what kind of condition the Texas cheerleader was in. "She was not talking, she basically could flutter her eyes and move her hands a little bit," the sheriff said. "Over a four-day period, they had her laying on a pallet in the house."
The sheriff said that the parents thought they could nurse their daughter back to health. "Basically, they thought they could nurse her back to health," Soward said. "We do not think they wanted the attention that this would draw to them if the little girl was injured, which is strangely ironic but that was their line of thinking."
However, he's not going into what the injuries are. He said the Texas cheerleader didn't break any bones and that it wasn't school-related.
"I will not, at this point in time, go into detail the injuries — detail on the injuries — or how they happened because I'm not 100 percent sure," he added, with caution. "And I don't want to sit up here and tell y'all these injuries happened this way and I find out they happened a different way."
He said that both defendants basically confessed to not calling emergency services.
"They told us how the injuries happened and they told us they failed to act," he said. "Throw out how the injuries occurred. Throw that out the window. You still have a duty as a parent to provide medical care for a 12-year-old child. That's what we're talking about right here."
