Nurse: Woman was warned her daughter needed better treatment

Lynn Doan

Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 | 10:55 a.m.

A nurse in Colorado warned 38-year-old Cheryl Botzet that her daughter Ariel was not getting proper treatment for her diabetes two years before the 11-year-old girl died of complications of the disease, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Botzet is charged with murder in Ariel's death, and prosecutors filed a motion Wednesday seeking to admit Botzet's earlier care of the girl and her two brothers as evidence in her October trial.

In the motion, prosecutors quote Molly Bangert, who treated Ariel in September 2002 at a diabetes clinic in Alamosa, Colo., where the family lived at the time. Bangert said Ariel's blood sugar level had not been checked for more than five months and she was not being given insulin on a consistent basis.

"The little girl is lucky to not have landed in the hospital," prosecutors quoted Bangert as saying.

When Bangert confronted Botzet about her daughter's urine test results in August 2002, prosecutors said, Botzet replied that "she did not need to be told how to manage her daughter's diabetes."

Herb Sachs, Botzet's lawyer, this morning called the motion "baloney" and said he would oppose prosecutors in the move.

Police and prosecutors allege Botzet neglected the monitoring of Ariel's insulin levels over a period of time, which led to the girl's death on Feb. 9. Ariel died of diabetic ketocidosis, a condition involving an acidifying of the blood caused by a lack of insulin.

Prosecutors also wrote in the motion that Botzet had failed to take Ariel to numerous free appointments at the diabetes clinic. During that time, social services also decided that Botzet's children were at "significant risk" after she left her two of her children alone for days while she visited Las Vegas, according to the motion.

Sachs said the motion was just an example of unnecessary information prosecutors were filing in the case, the "kind of nonsense they're feeding to judges."

Sachs pointed to prosecutors' claims that one of Botzet's two sons is being investigated for arson and assault and battery as another example. "So far, her son hasn't been charged for anything," he said.

District Attorney David Rogers said he would not respond to Sachs' allegations.

Prosecutors requested a hearing on the motion Aug. 23 or "as soon thereafter as the counsel may be heard." Botzet is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 11 on a charge of first-degree murder.