GUILTY PA - Alayja Coleman, 14 mos, starved to death, Erie, 24 May 2011

A Pennsylvania woman will spend the rest of her life in prison for starving her 14-month old daughter to death and hiding her body in a suitcase.

In three hours Thursday, a jury convicted Tania Coleman of first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Alayja.

The toddler's body was found in the suitcase in a pile of trash on the street last May by an Erie firefighter responding to an unrelated call.

Prosecutors say Coleman starved her daughter and withheld medical care because she was the "runt" and didn't fit into her family. The defense claimed Alayja had medical problems that kept her from eating.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_...d-in-toddlers-starving-death/?tag=re1.channel

Here is more background into this horrible case (that I cannot believe wasn't already posted here)

Mother 'starved baby to death and dumped her body by side of road because child was the family runt who didn't fit in'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...aby-death-dumped-body-road.html#ixzz1q0VCl0d2

Thank you for justice for sweet baby Alayja. Starvation cases always hit me so hard. I just can't fathom how one could starve their own flesh and blood to death. I always think of how much it hurts when you're really hungry. Poor sweet child. You deserved so much more.

The depth of depravity we're seeing these days is simply incomprehensible.

I just don't understand how a parent can do this.

How can a person not feed any living thing when it is hungry?

Some infants born very prematurely have oral aversions and refuse to eat to the point they can become extremely malnourished. But parents and medical professionals conspire to install feeding tubes, engage in feeding therapies and eventually, the child "outgrows" the feeding disorder.

If the child was not outright starved to death, was her medical condition unaddressed to the point -- an unthinkable point -- that she died of starvation?

I only think of this as a defense team maneuver to get the mother acquitted. It's very weak, because a parent's responsibility to seek medical care trumps a child's disordered feeding problems.

I have a barnyard of critters who bellow and quack and honk and cluck at me every time I go out there, begging for food. I worry I have obese animals, because not feeding them when they beg is something I need to work on. Starving a hungry human child is unimaginable. I hate to think it but I hope she was not "hungry", but did have a feeding disorder and did not experience starving to death as we imagine it might have happened