Who is Kristy Schneider? Arkansas mom charged with child endangerment for faking son's illness
SALINE COUNTY, ARKANSAS: A mother has been booked and charged after allegedly lying to doctors about her adoptive son's sickness. Identified as Kristy Schneider of Alexander, Arkansas, the mother told doctors about a mysterious illness she claimed her son had, seeking proper end-of-life care, say reports. Schneider and her husband, Erik, lost custody of their adopted son after doctors found loopholes in her claims about her son's pain. The child, Louie, has been placed in foster care since, and doing much better, health professionals told the court.
Schneider turned herself in on Tuesday, July 27, on charges of endangering the welfare of a minor, local channel KATV reported. Her case comes just a month after Kassceen and Dina Weaver were accused of killing their son and keeping the body frozen for over 2 years. Meanwhile, a year ago, Texas mom Megan Gee had her 4-year-old son hospitalized 200 times over fake ailments and forced doctors to put a feeding tube in his stomach. Gee was suspected of suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy - an illness where caregivers intentionally harm or fake illness in their children - something that officials believe Schneider also suffers from.
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Who is Kristy Schneider?
The Saline County woman had claimed that her adopted son Louie suffered from a chromosomal disorder and was in “significant and persistent” pain. The boy was prescribed high doses of narcotics for the symptoms described by Schneider and was put on drugs like fentanyl and morphine. Schneider's frequent blog posts about her son's alleged condition won over the hearts of many within the state with his heartbreaking story soon becoming a household topic within Arkansas.
That was until doctors began finding inconsistencies in Schneider's account of her adopted son's pain. This came after Schneider and her husband allegedly sought end-of-life care for the boy, and even arranged for multiple law enforcement agencies to line up along the way to the hospice care facility and salute the boy. However, just a month later, Louie, who was 9 at the time, was discharged from the hospital, and soon at least six doctors were of the opinion that Schneider made it all up.
One of Louie’s primary doctors, Megan Repp, said in a DHS hearing that she started having concerns for the boy within the first three to four visits because the pain claims and symptoms didn't match with what she was seeing. At one point, Louise was not expected to make out alive, but when the boy miraculously survived, Schneider said he "did a bad job of dying."
Repp later said in her testimony that while he was with Schneider and before being returned to foster care, Louie was “small, appeared to be malnourished, was quiet and kind, often in a wheelchair and on oxygen.” The boy was also on a feeding tube for months, allegedly. But since he entered foster care, in the three times Repp has seen the boy, “he had gained approximately seven pounds and was walking and jumping and was not on oxygen.”
At the time of the custody battle, Schneider was accused of suffering from "Munchausen by proxy," which the Cleveland Clinic describes as a disorder where caregivers “intentionally harm or describe non-existent symptoms in their children to get the attention given to the family of someone who is sick." Schneider was released from the Saline County Sheriff’s office after posting a $100,000 bond. Her court date is set for August 4.