A strict vegan woman has been convicted after the malnutrition death of her young son.
Sheila O'Leary, 38, was convicted last June of six charges: first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, child abuse, and two counts of child neglect.
Authorities have said that Sheila and her husband Ryan Patrick O'Leary only fed their son Ezra raw fruits and vegetables and breast milk.
According to a police report obtained by NBC-15, Ezra was 18 months old when he died in September 2019 and only weighed 17 pounds.
Authorities said on the day of the baby's death, he had been nursing when he started struggling to breathe. Instead of calling medical help, his parents say they went to sleep and by the time they woke up, Ezra had stopped breathing entirely.
According to a case statement from The Fort Myers News-Press, a medical examiner ruled the boy's cause of death to be complications of malnutrition, including dehydration, swelling of the child's feet, hands, and lower legs, and affecting the liver.
Sara Miller, Assistant State Attorney said in a statement, per the Daily Mail: "She chose to disregard his cries. She didn't need a scale to see his bones. She didn't need a scale to hear his cry." Amira Fox, the state attorney, also said the parents caused "extreme neglect" to their children.
Investigators revealed that the couple had two other children, a three-year-old and a five-year-old, who were severely malnourished. The children were fed a diet that consisted mostly of mangoes, bananas, avocados, and rambutans.
Court records disclosed that a fourth child - Sheila's 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship - spent most of her time with her biological father during an earlier malnutrition case in Virginia.
John Musca, the mother's attorney, maintained in a statement to local news outlet WFTX that Sheila and Ryan were loving parents who didn't intentionally murder their son.
"The child's death, while tragic, was neither purposeful nor neglectful, but accidental, and is listed on the death certificate as such," Musca said.
Sheila's sentencing was in Lee County, Florida - which had been postponed four times - and she told the judge that she did not wish to make a statement after her sentence was read out, per the Daily Mail.
The judge ordered her to life in prison while her husband is awaiting trial on the same charges. He has not yet entered a plea and is jailed without bond.
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