By CHAT News Today

Parents found guilty of first-degree murder in death of diabetic son

Feb 24, 2017 | 2:32 PM

CALGARY — A Calgary couple have been found guilty of first-degree murder in connection with the 2013 death of their teenage son who died from complications from diabetes in 2013.

Justice Karen Horner handed the decision against Emil Radita,60 and his wife Rodica, 54, in the death of their 15-year-old son Alexandru. While reading her decision, Horner said Alexandru’s death was “unnecessary and completely avoidable,” adding he was also unlawfully confined.

Emil and Rodica both receive an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

Alexandru, who was one of eight children, weighed less than 40 pounds when he died of complications due to untreated diabetes and starvation on May 7, 2013.

Alberta’s chief medical examiner testified an autopsy showed the teen was severely underweight, covered in ulcers and nearly toothless, and there were several signs the boy had been subjected to neglect and starvation.

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Dr. Jeffery Gofton said Alexandru appeared skeletal with thin hair and sunken eyes. He said the boy was wearing a diaper and had very little body fat.

He told court the teen’s teeth were in an extreme state of disrepair and it appeared most had rotted down to the root.

Witnesses testified that Emil and Rodica refused to accept that their son had diabetes and failed to treat his disease until he was hospitalized near death in British Columbia in 2003.

B.C. social workers apprehended Alexandru after his October 2003 hospital admission and placed him in foster care—where he thrived—for nearly a year before he was returned to his family.

The trial heard that the parents’ religious beliefs included not going to doctors. The day that Alexandru died, the family went to church and said that the boy had died, but that God had resurrected him.

-With files from The Canadian Press