Sheriff: Mother drowned her son, father drowned accidentally
NEW PHILADELPHIA – Authorities say an Amish woman will likely be charged with aggravated murder after drowning her 4-year-old son at Atwood Lake Saturday morning not long after her husband had accidentally drown while testing his faith with a long-distance swim.
Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell at a Monday press conference said it’s clear the 40-year-old woman was experiencing a mental health crisis during an unusual series of events at the campground that concluded with the woman loading her other three teen-age kids into a golf cart and driving into the lake around 10:30 Saturday morning. The teens were not hurt.
Campbell says the family was at the lake to relax shortly after the woman’s 40th birthday. However, he says the mother started using the lake to test her family’s faith.
“She and her husband went to this dock and jumped in because God was speaking to them and tell them to do things – things to prove their worthiness to God – to show their faith as complete. They didn’t do very well at those. Some of them were bizarre. Some of them were just swimming exercises. The most bizarre was God told her to allow herself to be swallowed by a fish.”
Campbell says the 45-year-old husband, Marcus J. Miller of Millersburg, disappointed in himself, went back to the dock by himself early Saturday morning, took off his clothes except his underwear, and attempted to swim to a sandbar. He never returned. He was last seen on the dock around 6:30 a.m. Saturday.
Around 8:30 a.m., the mother, who likely knew her husband’s fate, returned to the dock with the 4-year-old child, according to Campbell.
“She states that she went to the dock and she threw the 4-year-old in because that’s what she needed to do as an offering to God.”
Campbell is not naming the woman until the charges are official. He said she was being held in a mental health facility.
The county coroner has not yet determined the cause of manner of the deaths.
The coroner identified the man as 45-year-old Marcus J. Miller of Millersburg and the boy as Vincen Miller.
The other children were left in the care of family. Campbel says the behaviors of these parents are not indicative of their extended family members or their church.
“Every one of you are giving me a face like this is unbelievable, this is irrational, and that’s the same exact thoughts that this Amish family had. There’s no portion of them that thinks there’s any point to this.”
In a statement, the family and their church, the Old Order Amish church, asked for space to heal. They say “the recent events do not reflect the loving and caring family they were always known to be.”
The full press conference is on the WJER Facebook Page.