GUILTY VT - Isaac Robitille, 13, disabled, dies of alcohol poisoning, Hardwick, 22 Aug 2014

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OkieGranny

OkieGranny

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http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story.../two-charged-killing-son-alcohol-iv/16898333/

A Hardwick mother and her boyfriend are in custody and facing murder charges after state police said the two put alcohol in the IV bag of the woman's disabled son.

Isaac Robitille, 13, was discovered dead in August by his mother, who called Hardwick police to the scene, the Vermont State Police said Tuesday evening. Melissa Robitille, 38, and her boyfriend, Walter Richter III, 38, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of second-degree murder after an almost two-month investigation...

Isaac was born with significant medical conditions, including multiple physical handicaps that required the assistance of caretakers, feeding tubes and IVs to keep him alive, police said.
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http://www.mychamplainvalley.com/st...der-charges-in-h/39094/N7W7y76tfUya0I_hcHOzhQ

An autopsy released on September 5, found that Isaac's blood alcohol concentration was 0.146 percent. The cause of death was determined to be from alcohol and the manner was ruled a homicide.
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Wow. Caring for a multi disabled child is so difficult. I wonder if the mother just snapped. So tragic.
 
Here is the mother's blog. http://robitille.wordpress.com/about/

It looks like the "about" section was written in early 2013. In it she mentions her husband and that they had been married for 19 years. So the boyfriend must have been new in the past year or so. She talks about Isaaic, another son and three daughters. She has published two books and on one of them she uses the title Reverend Melissa A. Robitille.

Here is her Amazon author's profile, written in 2012: http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-A.-Robitille/e/B00A3AZW9Q

And her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Melissa-Robitille/203203153102649
 
When you look at all the energy and time she spent keeping Issac alive for 13 years, WTH happened? New boyfriend?
 
Two face murder charges in Hardwick teen's death
Elizabeth Murray, Free Press Staff Writer 8:51 p.m. EDT October 7, 2014

Isaac Robitille, 13, was discovered dead in August by his mother, who called Hardwick police to the scene, the Vermont State Police said Tuesday evening. Melissa Robitille, 38, and her boyfriend, Walter Richter III, 38, were arrested Tuesday on suspiucion of second-degree murder after an almost two-month investigation.
According to police, Robitille discovered called the police shortly after finding Isaac dead at 9 a.m. Aug. 22.

Vermont mom, boyfriend kill disabled 13-year-old by putting alcohol in IV: cops
BY Meg Wagner
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 9:52 AM

Police in Hardwick charged Melissa Robitille and her boyfriend, Walter Richter III, with second-degree murder Tuesday for allegedly putting alcohol in her 13-year-old son's IV tube. A toxicology report showed the boy died with a blood-alcohol content twice the legal limit.

[...]

Isaac was born with multiple disabilities: On her blog, Robitille explained he had a nervous system disorder and his brain never fully developed. Doctors predicted he would die before he turned 6 months old, she wrote.

 
ClaireNC said:
Here is the mother's blog. http://robitille.wordpress.com/about/
Click to expand...
. sbm

"We’ve been together longer than anyone else thought we would be, that’s for sure… To be fair, it didn’t look good on the surface if you didn’t know the people involved – I was 18 and had a child of my own, he was 45 and had been married 3 times before. Recipe for disaster, right? Most people gave us 6 months, tops." bbm

Sound like a marriage was not made in heaven but lasted longer than many anticipated. RIP Isaac.

(Hope I've ID'ed ^quote^ correctly- as being from her blog.)
 
I don't wanna get stomped on for saying what I'm gonna say.
...But maybe the alcohol was the only way they could dull his pain/torment.

It seems that the only people that can easily get strong meds (mainly pain meds, nerve meds, etc) are "pill-heads." Because of those people, it is harder and harder for the people that need them to get their meds. Most "nerve" pills also have anticonvulsant properties and aren't strictly for "nerves."
The main thing that the new regulations have accomplished is that many "pill-heads" have moved on to heroin and those in true need still have trouble getting meds.

Long-ago regulations have shut down many places (i.e. hospitals) that could care for such children. Those also pushed the mentally ill into homelessness. I wonder if a State Hospital would have been a better place for them, if they still existed in the number and with the funding they once had.

Was the alcohol the true cause of death? I just saw that it was an "impairing" amount.
That BAC wouldn't be good for a child that age, but I don't know if it would be fatal.
He's just a little younger than many of the people I would "party" with back in high school in the mid-1990's. Those kids had normal bodies/metabolisms and could drink vodka like water.

Did he have a metabolic disorder where his BAC (not tiny but not HUGE) would have killed him? I know his body was different from that of other kids his age, but don't really know how those differences affected how his body worked.
 
bflocket said:
I don't wanna get stomped on for saying what I'm gonna say.
...But maybe the alcohol was the only way they could dull his pain/torment.

It seems that the only people that can easily get strong meds (mainly pain meds, nerve meds, etc) are "pill-heads." Because of those people, it is harder and harder for the people that need them to get their meds. Most "nerve" pills also have anticonvulsant properties and aren't strictly for "nerves."
The main thing that the new regulations have accomplished is that many "pill-heads" have moved on to heroin and those in true need still have trouble getting meds.

Long-ago regulations have shut down many places (i.e. hospitals) that could care for such children. Those also pushed the mentally ill into homelessness. I wonder if a State Hospital would have been a better place for them, if they still existed in the number and with the funding they once had.

Was the alcohol the true cause of death? I just saw that it was an "impairing" amount.
That BAC wouldn't be good for a child that age, but I don't know if it would be fatal.
He's just a little younger than many of the people I would "party" with back in high school in the mid-1990's. Those kids had normal bodies/metabolisms and could drink vodka like water.

Did he have a metabolic disorder where his BAC (not tiny but not HUGE) would have killed him? I know his body was different from that of other kids his age, but don't really know how those differences affected how his body worked.
Click to expand...

WOW! Just WOW! I just should have scrolled & rolled. Isaac was an incapacitated child who did not have a choice. http://www.wcax.com/story/26739886/did-vt-mom-boyfriend-poison-disabled-teen-with-vodka
 
I am not even sure that mom did it, it could have been all bf. Takes moments to push alcohol into an iv. The amount makes me think that it was done to quieten or relieve pain not murder...bet its plead down to manslaughter
 
http://www.vnews.com/news/state/reg...eads-not-guilty-in-childs-alcohol-in-iv-death

A man told police he poured vodka into the IV feeding tube of his girlfriend’s disabled 13-year-old son to settle him down, a dose of alcohol that contributed to his death, according to court documents released Wednesday.

Walter Richters III and Melissa Robitille, both 38, were charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 22 death of Isaac Robitille. They entered not guilty pleas at their arraignment Wednesday afternoon in Caledonia County and were ordered held without bail...

Isaac was born with significant medical conditions and disabilities... Feeding tubes supplied him with a strict diet of a pediatric nutritional drink, baby formula, water and vitamins. Court records show that Robitille told police that an insurance foul-up meant she was paying $800 a month for the formulas... Her husband, Dana Robitille, died in January.
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This is an awful story. Apparently the Mom tried as hard as she could for 13 years. Honestly, in generations past children were put in asylums if they had this degree of disability, and were horribly mistreated. This mother, it seems to me, tried as hard as she could under extremely difficult conditions for 13 years. What was this child's quality of life, due to his medical impairments?

I worked within the mental health/mental disability field, and recognize it was horrible back in the 1900's -1960's As it is, now, though, parents with a child with this severe degree of impairment don't have many options and have to dedicate their lives to caretaking a child in a virtual vegetative state. That doesn't always work out well for anyone.
 
TheCrankyChef said:
WOW! Just WOW! I just should have scrolled & rolled. Isaac was an incapacitated child who did not have a choice. http://www.wcax.com/story/26739886/did-vt-mom-boyfriend-poison-disabled-teen-with-vodka
Click to expand...

Quote from the link you provided:
Police say Robitille and her boyfriend, Walter Richters, had been drinking the night before Isaac died. And investigators say Richters later confessed the child was agitated and that he poured a small amount of vodka into the child's IV bag, hoping to calm him down.
Click to expand...

I wonder why the mother is being charged too. The boyfriend admitted that he was the one that administered vodka. Such a sad story.
 
"Judge Robert Bent said Tuesday that Melissa Robitille, 39, of Hardwick, Vt., could not be charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 22 death of 13-year-old Isaac Robitille. She'd been held without bail since her arrest on Oct. 7.

But in setting Robitille's $25,000 unsecured bail, Bent said prosecutors have "a viable manslaughter case."
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime...n=Feed:+nydnrss/news/national+(News/National)
 
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