An Indiana mother has been sentenced to seven years in prison for injecting fecal matter into her son’s IV bag.
Tiffany Alberts will also serve five years of probation after her time in jail, CNN reports. Alberts was convicted of six counts of aggravated battery and one count of neglect during her trial in September. She wasn’t found guilty of an attempted murder charge, according to court records.
The mother was arrested and charged in 2016 after she used a syringe to introduce feces into her 15-year-old son’s IV while he was going through cancer treatments at a hospital in Indianapolis. Her actions deliberately placed him “in a situation that endangered the dependent's life or health,” according to court docs.
Alberts said she injected the syringe because she wanted her son to move from the ICU to another unit at the hospital, where she thought “the treatment was better,” per court docs. Her son had been undergoing leukemia treatment since August 2016 at the hospital. He was released and then returned a few days later, in September 2016, with a fever, vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the report.
Blood tests showed that the boy had picked up organisms usually found in feces, which led to a bacterial infection and sepsis. The doctors couldn’t explain how that had happened. Presuming that someone may have tainted the boy’s IV lines, hospital staff set up a video surveillance system. They eventually saw the mother inject a substance into his central line.
Authorities said Alberts first told them that she was inserting water to “flush it as the medicine that was given to him burned.” However, she later conceded that she’d injected her son’s fecal matter, which she stored in a gift bag on the bathroom sink in his room.
