A Bangor organization raising money for the family of a twin girl who died prematurely is either well-intentioned or jumping the gun.
“People 207,” headed by Robert Kearns of Bangor, started a GoFundMe campaign following Sunday’s so-far unexplained death of a 1-year-old girl in Milford.
Maine State Police say they have yet to determine how exactly the little girl they found “unresponsive” died, but Kearns has his own ideas.
When he announced the campaign Kearns theorized the girl died after an allegedly-drunken relative left her, her twin sister and an older 3-year-old sibling in an unheated car.
He claimed the victim died from exposure to freezing temperatures when the relative left the three kids in the vehicle and blacked out after going into a house to use the bathroom.
But some others who are keenly following the tragic case on Facebook claim the child died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
A Facebooker even posted a screenshot of an alleged email that the Maine Medical Examiner’s Office supposedly sent the dead child’s family saying that “no immediate cause of death was identified” following an autopsy and that further testing would be done over the next six to eight weeks.
The group that started the fundraising campaign, “People 207,” describes itself as a “grass roots mission.”
“We are in hopes of raising $10,000 or more for assisting in the care of the two surviving children,” Kearns said. “This will be used for food, shelter, clothing and any other expenses.”
Skeptical potential donors say they’re afraid the money may go to relatives who allegedly abandoned the three children rather than to the kids, who reportedly are now in state custody awaiting placement with the extended family.
But Kearns insisted that the money he raises “will go to the children,” not to anyone else not acting in their best interests.
If the child who died was in fact left unattended in an unheated car, she will have become the second youngster to die in similar circumstances in Milford in the past four months.
A 3-year-old girl died in a hot car in August in the same town and her mother was charged with manslaughter. The charge was later upgraded to depraved indifference murder.
