A 41-year-old Ohio mother who primarily fed her daughter Mountain Dew by bottle until her teeth rotted was sentenced Friday to nine to 13 1/2 years in prison for manslaughter.
Tamara Banks was charged with murder, manslaughter and child endangerment, but the murder and child endangerment charges were dropped after she pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Fox 19.
The girl’s father, Christopher Hove, 53, was charged with similar offences and has also pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He is due to be sentenced next month.
“This is one of the most tragic cases I’ve ever come across,” Clay Tharp, deputy prosecutor for Clay County, told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
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Tamara Banks, 42, was convicted of manslaughter. (Clermont County Jail)
The 4-year-old, who had been undiagnosed with diabetes for years, was found unresponsive in January 2022, Claremont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve said in a news release at the time.
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The girl was rushed to the hospital, where she was declared brain dead and eventually taken off life support, FOX 19 reported.
According to the Mayo Clinic, her cause of death was determined to be diabetic ketoacidosis, a complication of diabetes that causes life-threatening levels of acidity in the blood.
The girl’s diet consisted mainly of Mountain Dew, according to prosecutors. (Ray Lopez for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“KH suffered for much of her short life as a result of neglect and abuse by her parents,” Tekurub said, adding that her diabetes “went undiagnosed and untreated for a long period of time”.
Banks’ oldest son, Jerry, told FOX19 in March that he never met his sister because he was kept away from her, but he remembers his brother getting diabetic ketoacidosis a few years ago and having to be rushed to the hospital by their mother after she lost consciousness.
Banks was still being held in the Clermont County Jail as of Saturday night, according to the jail’s website. Clermont County is east of Cincinnati. (Clermont County Sheriff’s Office)
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“One day he became lethargic, he wouldn’t move, and the only thing he responded to was sugar. And for 36 hours, she [Tamara Banks] “I forced her to wake him up and take him to the hospital, and that’s when we found out he was in a state of DKA,” Jerry Banks told the station. [K.H.]The doctors happened to arrive in time and saved his life.”
Banks was still being held in the Clermont County Jail as of Saturday night, according to the jail’s website. Clermont County is east of Cincinnati.
