US mother who killed son so she could blog on his illness jailed

New York: A mentally-challenged mother in the US has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing her five-year-old son by administering him with a salt overdose so that she could write about his illness on social network websites.

Lacey Spears, 27, chronicled her son's illness on a personal blog called Garnett's Journey. "Her actions that day, they were inhuman. They despicable. They were evil," said Doreen Lloyd, Westchester County's assistant district attorney.

Spears' condition, Munchausen by proxy syndrome, caused her to crave the attention that being a mother with a sick child gave her, said acting state Supreme Court Justice Robert Neary.

While he believes that Spears was suffering from a mental illness, he did not think it affected her competency to stand trial or the necessity for her to receive more than the minimum, 15-year sentence.

(Photo: Facebook)

Spears was sentenced to 20 years in prison for committing second-degree murder.

Spears had moved to Chestnut Ridge, about 35 miles northwest of New York City, 14 months before the boy's death on January 23, 2014, living on the secluded Fellowship Community's grounds where volunteers live with and care for senior citizens in need.

Lloyd described the child as a normal, healthy child whose illnesses were induced by his mother, who eventually killed him by putting a lethal amount of salt into the hospitalised boy's feeding tube, all the while blogging and posting pictures to Facebook, USA Today reported.

"She continued to portray him as a sick child for her own bizarre need for attention. She used that feeding tube as a weapon to kill him," said Lloyd.