NOAH KING - 4 Months (2008) - Pittsburgh PA

A Tennessee woman pleaded guilty but mentally ill this morning in a
Pittsburgh courtroom to charges she poisoned her infant son with
saltwater.

Amber Brewington, 23, of Duck River, Tenn., was sentenced to five to
15 years in prison for her guilty pleas to aggravated assault and
endangering the welfare of a child.

Police arrested Brewington at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh after
a nurse saw her trying to disconnect the feeding tube for 4-month-old
Noah King on July 16, 2008.

When police searched Brewington's backpack, they found a plastic
syringe, a large container of Morton's table salt and two bottles of
Pedialyte filled with saltwater, according to a police affidavit.

Police say Brewington told them she wanted to hasten her son's death because he was suffering life-threatening seizures.

"I didn't mean to hurt my son," Brewington told Allegheny County
Common Pleas Judge Joseph K. Williams before he imposed the prison
sentence.

The salt water nearly killed her son and left him with a multitude of
medical problems including epilepsy, cerebral palsy, partial blindness,
autism and developmental problems. He also suffered a stroke which
paralyzed parts of his body, Assistant District Attorney Christopher
Hoffman said.

"The important thing here is that he will never be normal, clearly
from this. Nothing he was suffering from was hereditary. He was born a
healthy and normal child," Hoffman said.

A family in Tennessee later adopted Noah.

Since her arrest, Brewington has been at Torrence State Hospital and the Allegheny County jail.

A county psychiatrist said at a hearing in 2008 that Brewington
suffers from Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome — in which people make their
children sick — as well as a personality disorder, postpartum depression
and a form of retardation.

Noah's sodium level when brought to Children's was one of the highest
recorded levels, even for adults, according to police. High sodium
levels can lead to brain injury, permanent neurological impairment or
death.

Noah was transferred to Children's for treatment July 9 from
Vanderbilt University Hospital because of unexplained high levels of
sodium in his system, according to a police affidavit.