Caleb Nathaniel Tribble

Little 4 month old Caleb died due to medical complications from kidney problems. His parents were unaware of the seriousness of his condition and chose to pray for Caleb rather than seek medical assistance. David and Cathy Tribble were convicted and discharged. Source: 4theKids

On the last morning of his life, Caleb Tribble giggled as his dad David tickled him. The 4-month-old baby had been sick for a fortnight with what seemed like a tummy bug, but on Friday December 5, 2003, Cathy and David Tribble were pleased to see him smiling again, if a little tired and pale. After a visit from the public health nurse, who weighed and measured Caleb and told his mum to fatten him up as fast as she could, Cathy tucked him into bed for a morning nap. Caleb put his thumb in his mouth, closed his eyes, and died. The story might have ended there, but later that night a tearful and weary David Tribble told a police officer that he had become worried about Caleb's symptoms, including diarrhoea, vomiting and weight loss several days earlier. "I became quite concerned about him because I didn't like the look he had in his eyes," said David Tribble, a stocky, bearded man of 43 in a bare interview room at Whangarei Police Station. "He looked quite sick. I said to Dad that he had a spirit of death on him. He had darkened eyes; I believed it was a spiritual thing. Almost demonic, a demonic spirit that's there, it can kill you; a curse, a curse on him or something. It blew me away because I've nearly died many times and I had to speak to somebody about it. I went down to Dad and spoke to him about it. "We had a long talk about it and we thought we'd have a prayer for the child, he broke that [the curse] off him. Which Dad has some experience in, demonic deliveries." Those remarks started a chain of events which ended this week in the High Court at Whangarei, where David and his wife Cathy Tribble, 36, faced a criminal trial. Yesterday, after 12 hours of deliberations, a jury found them not guilty of manslaughter but guilty on an alternative count of failing to provide the necessities of life - that is, medical treatment. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/trial-highlights-clash-between-parent...