An Amish father in Ohio and his 4-year-old son are now dead following a deluded attempt by him and his wife to “prove their worthiness to God,” authorities say.
In a case of what authorities in Tuscarawas County have called a “spiritual delusion,” police said 45-year-old Marcus Miller and his 4-year-old son, Vincen Miller, are now dead, according to Fox 8.
Sheriff Orvis L. Campbell of the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office said that at about 10:39 a.m. Saturday, they responded to an incident at Atwood Lake where a woman and three of her children — her 15-year-old daughter and her twin 18-year-old sons — crashed a golf cart next to Atwood Marina West.
“After helping the woman out of the water, the woman made concerning statements about conversing with God,” Campbell said in a press statement Saturday. “It was evident that the crash into the water was intentional by the mother.”
Campbell said the teenagers, who were visiting the lake for the weekend from Holmes County with their parents, managed to escape the crash unharmed. They raised concerns, however, about their 4-year-old brother and father.
“It became evident after piecing together numerous statements from the woman, the children, and other witnesses … that foul play was suspected,” Campbell said.
At around 6:03 p.m., divers found the body of Vincen Miller and his mother was hospitalized for “some mental health concerns” as they sought to locate Marcus Miller. It was not until Sunday that the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office would announce in a statement that they had found the father’s body near where they had found his son.
While the official cause of death for the boy and his father is still pending from the Tuscarawas County Coroner, Dr. Jeff Cameron, officials said the 40-year-old mother was expected to be charged with aggravated murder on Tuesday, Fox 8 reported.
She told police that prior to her son’s drowning, she and her husband had visited Atwood Lake as part of a misguided test of faith in God.
“They jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things, things to prove their worthiness to God,” investigators explained.
Investigators say the mother told them she and her husband felt they had failed God. Even though her husband wasn’t a strong swimmer, he decided he would swim to a sandbar, but drowned.
The mother told investigators that at about 8 a.m. on Saturday, she put her 4-year-old son in the lake off a boat dock because she had “given her son to the Lord.”
“According to the [surviving teenage] children,” Campbell told Fox 8, “she [their mother] made them all lie down on the dock with their hands in the water, to pray for their little brother and father because they were gone.”
In a statement to Fox 8, the family of the couple said the “events of this past weekend do not reflect our teachings or beliefs but are instead a result of a mental illness.”
It was noted that the family are members of the Old Order Amish Church in Holmes County, which released a statement to Fox 8, noting that the family had previously received professional help.
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