Vincen Miller Amish 4 year old & dad, Marcus J. Miller drown as mom is blamed for spiritual delusion after trying to prove worth to God in Lake Atwood tragedy in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.
An Amish mother in the throes of mental illness faces charges in the drowning death of her 4 year old son with the child’s father also drowning in the same lake in Tuscarawas County, Ohio authorities said.
Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell during a press conference said ‘spiritual delusion’ was a factor in the deaths of the woman’s husband and their 4-year-old son.
The two were identified as 45-year-old Marcus J. Miller and 4-year-old Vincen Miller.
The man’s wife and child’s mother, a 40-year-old woman, has been hospitalized for mental health treatment.
Campbell said she is expected to be formally charged Tuesday with aggravated murder.
The situation occurred over the course of the weekend while the family camped at Atwood Lake according to KBTX.
Campbell said officials learned during the investigation that at around 1 a.m. on Saturday, the husband and wife, who believed God was speaking to them, went to the dock and jumped in the water.
The sheriff said they believed they were carrying out tasks to try and prove their faith to God.
‘What she says is that she and her husband went to this dock, and they jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things,’ Campbell said, according to WKYC. ‘Things to prove their worthiness to God, to show their faith is complete. And they didn’t do very well in those. Some of them were bizarre, some of them were just swimming exercises. The most bizarre was that God told her to allow herself to be swallowed by a fish, as bizarre as that sounds.’
Once they returned to the campgrounds, Marcus Miller reportedly told his wife he was going back to the lake, allegedly having told his wife that he was disappointed in himself for failing the tests ‘because he didn’t have enough faith.’
The man allegedly said he was going back to the lake to swim to a sandbar a lengthy distance from the dock.
According to Campbell, a witness spotted him along the dock at 6:30 a.m. Crews later recovered his body nearby.
A short time later, at around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Campbell said the mother placed 4-year-old Vincen on a golf cart and began to drive recklessly.
That’s when Campbell said she returned to the dock and drowned her son, which she later admitted to deputies.
The mother is then accused of forcing her remaining children in the lake at different times.
At around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Campbell said she drove into the lake on a golf cart carrying her three other children, described as a 15-year-old daughter and 18-year-old twin sons.
The teen girl and twins got out of the water on their own and were not injured.
The golf cart crash led to first respondents treating the mother who soon after allegedly made concerting statements, including having intentionally driven the cart into the lake.
As deputies questioned her, Campbell said the mother spoke about placing her son in the water ‘to give him to God.’
She also attempted to run from deputies and hide in a bush. It was at that time that officials learned Vincen and Marcus Miller were missing.
Crews searched numerous locations on Saturday for the two. Vincen’s body was located at around 6 p.m. Marcus Miller’s body was found in the same area at around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Campbell said the Miller family, who are Amish and from Holmes County, were visiting the lake for the weekend.
The teen daughter and twins are now being cared for by other family members.
The Miller family’s relatives and church released a statement after news of the deaths, which said, in part, ‘the events of this past weekend do not reflect our teachings or beliefs but are instead a result of a mental illness.’
‘The ministry and extended family had been walking with them through their challenges, and they had also received professional help in the past,’ church and family members also said in the statement.
The Tuscarawas County coroner will conduct autopsies to determine how they died.
‘The recent events do not reflect the loving and caring family they were always known to be,’ individuals who knew the victims added.
