Lluvia Espinoza Morales (credit: CBS)
Posted on 02/21/2013 3:50:50 PM PST by null and void
LONGMONT, Colo. (CBS4) – Investigators had to don protective suits as they are tried to determine what killed a 6-year-old girl in Longmont Monday morning.
The investigation began at approximately 9 a.m. when the girl, identified as Lluvia Espinoza Morales, was taken to the hospital. She was pronounced dead at the hospital, but there were no signs of foul play.
Police started going down the list of what could have killed the girl. One thought was that she had influenza. Investigators consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to go into the girl’s home.
“We don’t know the cause. The initial investigation is not showing us anything suspicious,” Cmdr. Jim Lewis with Longmont police said.
Crews in hazmat suits, using all the precautions, entered the girl’s home. Some were also washed down when they were done.
“We don’t know. It could be the flu or it could be something pre-existing,” Lewis said. “But to send our people into an unknown environment and possibly expose them to that would have been irresponsible on our part.”
Neighbor Chloe Dominguez said Morales looked fine when she was outside playing the past few days.
“They looked fine, healthy; just fine,” Dominguez said. “They didn’t seem sick. They looked healthy, running around.”
“She was a happy little girl, always active, always playing around, very nice with everybody, especially with her sisters,” Morales’ uncle Rigo Holguin told CBS4.
One of Morales’ young friends was just trying to make sense of the situation.
“We would just play normal games like hide-and-go-seek, tag,” she said. “You’d normally never see her sad. She’d always be like running around and she’d be happy.”
Lluvia Espinoza Morales (credit: CBS)
On Tuesday a memorial to Morales outside of her home had grown since Monday night.
On Tuesday investigators and the coroner said they still don’t have an idea of what killed Morales. It could be flu, but they said it could be something else. The final determination is going to be made by the coroner, but that could take several weeks.
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The U.S.? We are the most over-medicated people on the planet.
I’m sure we can blame Republicans and sequestration.
A perfectly horrid news story: there is nothing in the story to explain why authorities thought an infectious or toxic agent (as opposed to something like a congenital aneurysm) was to blame.
No description of the symptoms AT ALL.
She turned black and essploded with blood?
Her head fell off?
Could be anything, weird.
She had a Mexican sounding name, with a presumed middle initial of "illegal", and most assuredly the panic kindled by white Republicans.
THOSE are symptons, baby !
It helps to read the short story “medical detective” stories of Berton Roueché, like Eleven Blue Men, and The Incurable Wound.
At the dawn of the age of antibiotics, there was a lot more concern about dangerous and unusual communicable diseases, especially after the US military was introduced to a whole bunch never before seen in America.
However, antibiotics and vaccines were so effective that people for the most part forgot. But now with a new age of antibiotic resistant bacteria rising, medical personnel are remembering to treat it with much more respect.
Quietly, the number of reported antibiotic resistant infections in the US passed one million a year in the mid-2000s. What everyone is waiting for is a growing number of virulent, even lethal cases.
Also thinking what you posted.
Let's hope the investigators will seem overly cautious in retrospect.
A little girl dies and you make jokes. I started lurking here in 1998, but the some of the comments I’ve seen here lately make me ashamed of that fact.
It’s not even worth opus-ing.
Admin Mod, please delete my account. Thank you, and good riddance.
I’ve made no jokes here.
Poor little girl. RIP.
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