The US Government has stopped the removing of life support to an 11-year-old girl after doctors said her condition is improving after four months in a coma. The coma was allegedly caused by the beating she had received from her stepfather and adoptive mother. The girl had been on a respirator for a period of four months, and her coma was declared irreversible by doctors. The girl is showing signs of coming out of her vegetative state.
Haleigh was comatose with severe brain injuries when she was brought to a western Massachusetts hospital in September 2005. Her stepfather Jason Strickland and her aunt Holly Strickland, who adopted the girl, were charged with criminal assault for allegedly beating the child with a baseball bat.Holly Strickland and her grandmother were found shot dead less than two weeks later in what authorities are investigating as a murder-suicide. Jason Strickland went to court to stop authorities from letting Haleigh die, but the state supreme court denied him any say in what happens to the girl, leaving the social services department her sole guardian.
Edited DPA
