Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Nation in brief

Removed from life support after giving birth, brain-dead mom dies

By wire services
Published August 4, 2005

ARLINGTON, Va. - A brain-dead woman who was kept alive for three months so she could deliver the child she was carrying was removed from life support Wednesday and died, a day after giving birth.

"This is obviously a bittersweet time for our family," Justin Torres, the woman's brother-in-law, said in a statement.

Susan Torres, a cancer-stricken, 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, suffered a stroke in May after the melanoma spread to her brain.

Her family decided to keep her alive to give her fetus a chance. It became a race between the fetus' development and the cancer that was ravaging the woman's body.

Torres gave birth to a daughter, Susan Anne Catherine Torres, by Caesarean section on Tuesday at Virginia Hospital Center. The baby was about two months premature and weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces. She was in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Doctors removed Torres from life support early Wednesday with the consent of her husband, Jason Torres, after she received the final sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church.

SALT LAKE CITY - A bolt of lightning killed a 15-year-old Boy Scout and injured three others while they slept in a log shelter during a violent storm.

"There was a big flash and a big boom," said Stephen Morris, a trauma surgeon at the University of Utah's burn unit who was with the troop. "Somebody came running down the trails saying, "Help, we need help.' "

Morris said he tried in vain for 90 minutes to revive the boy, who had no heartbeat and wasn't breathing after the strike Tuesday night.

Two of the injured boys were flown to the University of Utah burn unit. One boy was in good condition and the family of the other asked that no information be released. A third boy was in fair condition at another hospital.

The family of the victim, Paul Ostler, released a statement thanking leaders and doctors at the Scout camp "who tried so valiantly to save Paul's life."

Camp Steiner is the highest Boy Scout camp in the country at 10,400 feet elevation in the Uinta Mountains about 60 miles from Salt Lake City.

FORT WORTH - A former teacher accused of having sex with a 13-year-old male student was convicted Wednesday of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child.

Dawn Reiser, 30, who had been the boy's teacher at Holy Trinity Catholic School in Grapevine, could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Reiser was convicted on the testimony of the boy, who is now 14, and on the strength of love letters that she wrote to him in the summer of 2004.

A few days after they had sex, the boy went to camp, where he heard the testimony of a counselor who said he had been sexually abused by an older woman. The boy confided in the counselor, and the following day, the three letters arrived.

NEW ORLEANS - The Washington and New Orleans homes and the vehicle of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson were raided by federal agents Wednesday.

Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, would not comment on what federal agents were looking for.

In a statement, Jefferson said he did "not know the extent or precise nature of this investigation."

[Last modified August 4, 2005, 01:06:05]