GLEBE, Australia, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- An Australian inquest is trying to determine if a toddler with a devastating neurological disease died accidentally in a swimming pool drowning.
Kathryn Element, a caseworker with the Department of Children's Services, testified the 2-year-old girl's parents seemed desperate about her diagnosis with Rett's syndrome, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The inquest is being held in Glebe, a Sydney suburb.
''I want to get an injection to put her to sleep,'' the mother said, adding she would not kill her daughter but wanted lethal euthanasia.
Rett's syndrome, caused by a genetic mutation, is a developmental disorder that leaves most victims unable to care for themselves.
''We love her but we can't live with it,'' the mother told another caseworker, Louise Worden in October 2007. ''I don't want to see her suffering. I want a normal life.''
The father described having a daughter who might need full-time care for her entire life as "a sentence."
"It's like we're dead," he said.
The toddler drowned in an inflatable pool in December 2007.
