‘Evil spirit’ attack preceded infant’s death, father allegedly claimed

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2015/may/13/8216evil-spirit8217-attack-preceded-infant8217s/

By Joshua Sharpe
May 13, 2015

Herbert “George” Landell’s explanation for his infant daughter’s death didn’t sit right with Duluth police.

“He tried to say there was an evil spirit that attacked his child,” detective Charles Hamrick testified in a preliminary hearing Wednesday. “He described it as a battle between his prayer and this evil spirit.”

As alleged by the investigator, the devoutly-Christian father, now charged with murder along with his wife, claimed the demon appeared a week before the assault on 10-week-old Neveah Landell was done and he took her wrapped in a towel to the hospital.

Doctors and police, however, believe the child died from starvation due to “water intoxication.” The condition was reportedly brought on by watered-down breast milk the couple used to save money. The detective said it took much longer to kill her than the week the demon supposedly had the emaciated girl in its grips.

But Landell, 26, a now-former Publix supermarket worker, isn’t a believer in doctors or medicine and held to the theory that evil took his little girl’s life, according to Hamrick.

On her last day, March 25, he told police he found her in trouble, her skin turned grey and blue. He said he lifted her from the crib and tried to give her a bottle. He told his wife, 25-year-old Lauren Fristed, to leave the room because of her “negative energy,” and he prayed, Hamrick said.

Neveah, thinner than at birth, was dead before the couple broke down and took her to Gwinnett Medical Center — Duluth.

The detective recalled being taken aback when he walked in to interview them after doctors ruled the child dead. They were laughing and talking, he said.

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tags: child abuse,

During his testimony, Hamrick explained in detail how the mother had wanted to get her child help. She wanted to use formula when she couldn’t produce enough breast milk, and she wanted to take Neveah to the hospital sooner.

On the day the girl died, Fristed sent a text to her “spiritual adviser,” a minister of non-denominational Christianity in Lawrenceville, saying, “I wish he would let us go get her seen about,” the detective said.

Faith prevented her from pressing it.

“She told me on several occasions that she obeys her husband,” Hamrick said, “that that’s what the Bible says.”