LETHBRIDGE, Alberta — Two parents who refused to medically treat their seriously ill 19-month-old son claim first responders are responsible for the child’s death in 2012.
David, 32, and Collet Stephan, 35, treated their son Ezekiel with maple syrup over the span of two weeks for flu-like symptoms before he stopped breathing.
The toddler was later found to have meningitis, the Raw Story reported.
Although both parents were tried and convicted for “failing to provide necessities of life” for their son and will serve jail time, they insist that the ambulance crew is at fault.
According to David Stephan, the crew lacked the proper equipment in the ambulance to provide oxygen to the toddler after attempted CPR, although he didn’t specify which devices could have prevented the child from going eight minutes without oxygen.
The Stephans consider themselves anti-vaccination advocates, attributing to why they attempted natural home remedies to cure their sick child.
“We were treating our child with different homeopathic remedies, different herbal remedies like tens of thousands of people do, nothing out of the ordinary, and he wasn’t severely ill, and everything just came to a crash on an evening and we ended up in an ambulance that didn’t have the right equipment,” Stephan said.
The Stephans will be sentenced Thursday and/or Friday.