Sherin Mathews News, Cause of Death: Body of 3-Year Old Released, Orphanage Demands Answers
The body of Sherin Mathews, who was found dead after going missing early this month, has been released to a funeral home by the Dallas medical examiner.
Details about the cause of death of the three-year-old are yet to be released and the Mother Teresa Orphanage and Children's Home in the city of Nalanda in eastern India's Bihar, the orphanage from which her parents adopted her are trying to make sense of the tragedy.
The lifeless body of Mathews was found by cadaver dogs inside a drain under a road in Richardson on Sunday less than a mile from their home. Wesley Mathews, who adopted her June last year, has been charged of felony injury to a child.
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He initially reported the girl missing a couple of weeks before her body was found and claimed that he made her stand in an alley at 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk.
"She was coughing and her breathing slowed. Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died," the affidavit read, adding that he got rid of the body from their house.
He then changed his story, saying that he "physically assisted" the child to drink her milk, but she choked and ultimately died. He said that young Sherin had developmental disabilities and a special diet regimen for malnourishment that required assistance and feeding her whenever she is awake.
However, the folks over at the Indian orphanage who raised Sherin when she was still an infant said that she is perfectly fine and was even eating solid food and drinking milk from a cup before she was adopted.
Babita Kumari, the manager of the orphanage, questioned the father's story during an interview with The Associated Press:
Why did they have to make her eat or drink anything at that hour? Why was he forcing her? If someone is forcing a drink into the mouth of someone who is crying and sobbing, then even an adult can choke.
Kumari remembered Sherin as smart girl and how they loved her laughter:
I will always want to know what happened to this child. What was the real reason she passed away. If we had known this would happen to her, we would never have sent her.
Wesley has already turned himself in with the hearing set Nov. 13.
