The Michigan woman convicted of starving her disabled teenager vomited violently on the stand Friday after she was shown photos of her emaciated body hours before she died.
Shanda Vander Ark, 44, testified that she had given 15-year-old Timothy Ferguson a hot bath, a detail her eldest son strongly disputed, shortly before he was found dead in July 2022 in the glorious closet in the that she forced him to sleep. wrapped only in a tarp.
An autopsy determined that the teen, who weighed just 69 pounds, died from malnutrition and hypothermia.
Prosecutor Matt Roberts pressed Vander Ark on the details of the alleged bath, confirming that she was the one who placed Timothy inside and washed him herself.
“Does it look like this when you put it in the bathtub?” Roberts asked after placing several photographs of Timothy’s bruised and severely weakened body in front of his mother.
Vander Ark immediately puts his hand over his mouth and gags as he looks at the photographs before giving in and vomiting profusely into a trash can under the stand.
A Michigan mother who starved her disabled son vomited while in the courtroom Friday. Court TV Shanda Vander Ark was testifying when she vomited in front of the court. Court TV Vander Ark was arrested in 2022 for the murder and torture of her 15-year-old son Timothy Ferguson. Muskegon County Jail
“I’m sorry,” she begins before being overcome by another round of nausea that turns into sobs and prompts the judge to clear the courtroom.
Vander Ark was still ill and did not return to the courtroom when the jury returned its guilty verdict for murder and child abuse.
The jury took just over an hour to deliberate. She faces a mandatory life sentence when she is sentenced on January 29.
“She killed him. She starved him,” Roberts said.
Vander Ark’s disabled son was found dead in a closet she forced him to sleep in, wrapped only in a tarp. Muskegon County Jail
Vander Ark’s attorney, Fred Johnson, argued that his client did not understand the harm he caused his son and did not know he was starving.
A series of text messages and confessions from Timothy’s older brother challenged Johnson’s claims, including his testimony that he gave the boy a warm bath the night he died.
Paul Ferguson, 20, allegedly told investigators that he had given Timothy an ice bath that day, leaving him in the bathtub for at least four hours, because his mother had ordered him to.
During the trial it was revealed that Vander Ark fed her son hot sauce. Muskegon County Jail
Ice baths were one of the teenager’s common abuses, in addition to being fed hot sauce, restrained with shackles and zip ties, and deprived of sleep.
Vander Ark also ordered Paul Ferguson, who faces a charge of first-degree child abuse for his alleged role in the crime, to taunt his younger brother with a frozen pizza roll and pour hot sauce on his genitals.
Although Paul Ferguson denied the latter, he admitted to carrying out many of his mother’s other deranged demands during his testimony against her.
“I would say it’s something like Stockholm syndrome,” he said.
“I want to find a role model who, because of my low self-esteem, would do anything to make them proud of me.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn