Authorities say nurses at Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Mesa found the woman and her 5-year-old child dead inside the child’s room after 2 a.m. Saturday.
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“When they came back at 2 a.m., both of them were down”, Berry said.
When staff checked in on 5-year-old Helious Griffith and his mom around midnight, they were fine.
According to police, Lola’s body was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, although a gunshot was not heard inside the hospital.
Tami had a hard meeting with officials from the Department of Child Safety on November 5, Griffith said.
Hospital staff cut off the ligature but could not revive the boy, Berry said. The cause of death is pending an autopsy by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office, he said.
The boy had been hospitalized for the past week, but Berry declined to say why the boy was in hospital, citing privacy rules.
Police believe the mother took her son’s life and then took her own life.
“They told her, ‘We’ll make decisions for him now, ‘” Griffith told The Republic. No others in the hospital were harmed during the incident.
A Facebook page linked to Griffith features images of the same woman and boy, and several references to cerebral palsy.
Detectives are trying to learn more details about the mother from family members.
“I’m a single mother of a special needs little boy whom will be turning 6 this Christmas eve 2015”, Griffith wrote.
David Lozano – a spokesman for Banner Health, the company that runs Cardon Children’s Medical Center – said that “at no time were others impacted” by what he also called the “apparent murder-suicide”. Banner Health has a policy – which is posted at entrances – against carrying firearms and weapons into its facilities, Lozano said. His mother says he, “also suffers from separation anxiety when I’m out of his line of sight where he cries and can not self-calm”. It asks visitors to, “please refrain from any negative comments as the family is having a hard time dealing with this tragic loss”.
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‘He has been traumatized by doctors where now he expresses extreme anxiety and downright terror when he smells rubbing alcohol and/or see someone in scrubs or lab coat’.
