{"id":211990,"date":"2019-10-13T12:28:09","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T17:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=211990"},"modified":"2019-10-12T22:36:28","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T03:36:28","slug":"grandmother-kills-autistic-grandson-care-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/grandmother-kills-autistic-grandson-care-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandmother kills autistic grandson because she felt no one would care for him after her death"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>An 87-year-old Florida woman is being charged with second-degree murder after killing her 30-year-old autistic grandson. Lillian Parks claimed she killed Joel Parks because she was dying, and feared no one would be there to care for him after she was gone &#8212; yet Parks&#8217; remaining family is crying foul.<\/p>\n<p>Joel, who lived at a group home during the week and with his grandmother on the weekends, was found by his sister, Yvonne Parks. She said when she returned to the apartment on Saturday night, she saw her grandmother and brother sleeping on the couch in front of the TV, and thought nothing of it. But the next morning, she found Joel still in the same place, with Lillian awake. \u201cI said, \u2018Grams, it doesn\u2019t look like he\u2019s breathing,\u2019&#8221; Yvonne <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/2019\/09\/26\/family-speaks-out-after-police-say-bradenton-disabled-man-is-murdered-by-grandmother\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told WWSB<\/a>. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when she said clear as day, \u2018Because he\u2019s not.\u2019 And I said, \u2018What do you mean he\u2019s not? Like what are you talking about?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m doing us both in, we\u2019re going together.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lillian then admitted to police that she gave Joel a drug overdose. \u201cThis is a process where it was thought out, planned and she took a human life,\u201d Bradenton Police Captain Brian Thiers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wric.com\/news\/u-s-world\/woman-says-she-killed-disabled-grandson-by-overdose-fearing-no-one-would-care-for-him-after-she-died\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told WFLA<\/a>. And though Lillian claimed no one would be there to care for him after she died, and that he was estranged from his family, Yvonne and the people who cared for him tell a different story.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hz3WtGZ-DxU\" width=\"640\" height=\"355\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJoel was one of the happiest guys that you could ever meet. He was also one of the strongest huggers that you would ever meet, he would come up to you and give you that bear hug and you knew you had been hugged,\u201d Tom Waters, CEO of Easterseals of Southwest Florida, told WFLA. \u201c(The) Easterseals family is in mourning, the disabilities community is in mourning, lots of people are in mourning because\u2026 everything in this situation is tragic. We want to express our condolences because as we mourn, I know they do, but we\u2019re celebrating him. We\u2019re celebrating the life that he had and the life he shared with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ:\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/man-wife-legalization-euthanasia\/\">Man who strangled disabled wife calls for legalization of euthanasia<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Toshia Fretz, Joel&#8217;s mother, and James Fretz, his stepfather, both denied they were estranged. \u201cFor her to say that he was estranged from his mother is a big lie,\u201d James said to WWSB, while Toshia added, \u201cI have never been estranged from my children, by choice. I would\u2019ve come and gotten Joel. [Lillian] had planned two weeks prior to that, that she was gonna let [Yvonne] come and take him back to Ohio!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yvonne, for her part, seemed to have a more sinister explanation, noting that Lillian she had asked her to come to Florida from Ohio to help clean out her apartment and take Joel back with her. \u201cBecause she wasn\u2019t sure if she was going to commit suicide or if she was going to go through with having the hiatal hernia surgery and go to a nursing home afterwards,\u201d she explained to WWSB, then adding through sobs, \u201cShe took my brother for no reason. And to sit there and say that there was no option, that was the only way, that\u2019s crap! There was plenty of people!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>People with disabilities face violence at alarmingly high rates, and are <a href=\"http:\/\/cdrnys.org\/blog\/advocacy\/the-unacknowledged-crisis-of-violence-against-disabled-people\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">up to three times more likely<\/a> to be victims of violent crimes. For many people, a life with a disability is one not worth living, but the truth is, all people have a right to life. All people, regardless of their abilities, have inherent human value and dignity. And no person should be harmed simply because one person decides they might be a burden.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveactionnewsonline\/\">\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An 87-year-old Florida woman is being charged with second-degree murder after killing her 30-year-old autistic grandson. Lillian Parks claimed she killed Joel Parks because she was dying, and feared no one would be there to care for him after she was gone &#8212; yet Parks&#8217; remaining family is crying foul. Joel, who lived at a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":169062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grandmother kills autistic grandson because she felt no one would care for him after her death<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People with disabilities face violence at alarmingly high rates, and are up to three times more likely to be victims of violent crimes.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/grandmother-kills-autistic-grandson-care-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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