Official: Auburn girl died of inflamed heart

Don Prater and Katie Stallcup
Staff writers
Published: June 30, 2008

Preliminary reports of an ongoing investigation concerning the death of a 7-year-old Auburn girl indicate that the cause of death was an inflamed heart and not potentially contagious meningitis, according to Chambers County coroner Jeff Jones.

The girl, whose name and the names of her parents were withheld by authorities, died Sunday after she reportedly stopped breathing near Valley while the family was returning home from a trip to LaGrange, Ga. She was taken to the George H. Lanier Hospital in Valley, where after about an hour, was pronounced dead.

The 7-year-old girl was a patient at the Pediatric Clinic L.L.C. in Auburn and was also a student at Hardy’s Creative Childcare Inc. for about a year.

No contagious illness had been confirmed as the cause of the girl’s death, but students that had direct contact with her have received an oral antibiotic as a preventive step according to Martha Hardy, owner of Hardy’s Creative Childcare Inc.

Bacterial meningitis, an infection of the fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and the brain, can result in brain damage and death and most commonly occurs in very young children. But officials ruled out meningitis.

However, the preliminary findings concur with what Valley Police Department Capt. Mike Reynolds had learned about the case Monday afternoon.

“The physician attending the 7-year-old girl did not indicate that there was any public health threat,” Reynolds said. “The treatment she was under wasn’t for anything major.”

The child’s body has been sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Montgomery for an autopsy. The incident remains under investigation.