Vegan couple gets life for child's death

ATLANTA, May 9 (UPI) -- A judge in Fulton County, Ga., sentenced two vegan parents to life in prison Wednesday for their role in their newborn's death by starvation.

Pleas from the couple, who were convicted of murder in the child's death, apparently had no effect on Superior Judge L.A. McConnell as he gave Jade Sanders and her boyfriend Lamont Thomas a pair of life sentences, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.

"Not once was I asked if I loved my son," Sanders, 27, said. "I'm not a number. I'm a person. I loved my son and I did not starve him."

The couple raised their son, Crown, on a diet primarily made up of organic apple juice and soy milk. When the newborn died at six weeks, he weighed only 3 1/2 pounds.

The newborn was born in an apartment's bathtub and had never been taken to a doctor.

The newspaper said the prosecutor maintained throughout the trial Sanders and her 31-year-old boyfriend intentionally underfed their son and repeatedly neglected him.