‘This Was Not a Faith Healing Death,’ Lawyer Tells Jury
Korte said the Swezeys thought their son had the flu, and they thought he was getting better. “Ladies and gentlemen, this was not a faith healing death,” he told them.
In the prosecution’s version, Zachery was a very sick boy, with severe stomach pains, vomiting and diarrhea over the two and a half days leading up to his death. He was so sick he needed help making it to the bathroom, and could not control his bowel. So sick that his parents moved him first to the couch, and then to their own room. And family members came and stayed to help care for him. His fever was so high that he went without clothing, and soaked the sheets with sweat, Okanogan County Prosecutor Karl Sloan told the jury.
In the end he was delirious. He asked for his father. His hands turned blue. His breathing slowed, and he died, Sloan said.
“At no point, even then, was any medical assistance called for. No ambulance. Nothing,” he said.
Doctors who have seen hundreds of cases of appendicitis and dozens of ruptures have never had a patient die of it, he told them. “It’s a preventable death, easily, with medical attention,” he said. “That failure to obtain treatment was the direct and ultimate cause of Zachery’s death,” he told the jury.