Shownotes Transcript
Halloween is right around the corner, which means sweater weather is in full swing. Recently I've been cleaning out my closet and making room for all of my winter stuff, just generally getting rid of things I've outworn and donating them. Naturally, I like to push things like this off, but I've been so proactive this year and I think it's all because of Audible. My favorite recent title that got me through the sweater weather cleaning is this kind of...
short story titled The Grown-Up by Gillian Flynn. Her name may sound familiar. She's the same author of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects, which were fantastic, also on Audible. And I mean, her writing just translates so well over audio. And guys, her short story that I was listening to while I was getting ready for spooky season was the perfect way to set that tone
Autumn, Audible, ambience. If you like the treats part more than the tricks though, I know that not everybody can do the horror or the scary spooky stories on Audible. That's fine. Audible has so many other genres and titles of audiobooks. I couldn't even name them all even if I wanted to. And that's not a figure of speech. I'm talking audiobooks.
Literally, they have thousands of titles to choose from. Audible also offers podcasts like ours, guided wellness programs, theatrical performances, which one of our RMT members is obsessed with on Audible, comedy, and Audible originals. So if you want to switch up the cadence of a narrator or switch to a different type of storytelling than normal audio book,
Audible has you covered there too. My favorite Audible feature just in general is the customizable playback speed. It is a game changer for those commutes, getting ready, nighttime routines, and honestly cleaning out your closet. Audible members can keep one title a month to keep from the entire catalog. New members can try Audible now free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash rotten or text rotten to 500-500. That's audible.com slash rotten or text rotten to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days.
March 17th, 2011. It's a rainy day in Sacramento, California. Grandma Chua has mud all over her shoes from doing yard work at the back of the house. But that's not even what she's concerned about right now. Right now, Grandma Chua is staring at this really bizarre odd sight. She's standing at the opening of the back door to the house. So the back door is open. And in the open doorway...
is her daughter and her granddaughter. Kai Yang, Chua's daughter, is holding the little two-month-old baby in her arms, and everything about this sight is just not normal. First of all, Kai's face is red. She's sweaty. She looks like she's just worked out, but she's not even in workout clothes. It's just a little bit puzzling, but at least it's not alarming yet. Until Grandma Chua's eyes go down, Kai's pants, they're wet.
There's a massive stain on her thighs. I mean, sure, maybe she could have spilled water on herself, but honestly, it looks more like she urinated on herself.
Then Grandma Chua's eyes go to baby Mirabelle, the two-month-old granddaughter. She's not moving. She's not making a single noise. In fact, her face is red and her body seems unusually stiff. But it's very hard to tell because she's in her onesie, she's wrapped up in this blanket, and her daughter is telling her, "Mom, we gotta go to the hospital. She's sick. She's sick. Hurry, we gotta go to the hospital." Another odd detail Grandma Chua notices right at this moment is that her daughter Ka sounds like her tongue is injured.
She's not enunciating like she normally does. I imagine it's kind of like trying to talk with your fingers clamped on your tongue. It sounds kind of odd, kind of like that the whole time. And a little bit of blood is on her lip.
Grandma Chua goes straight into grandma mode. She runs into the house. She takes her granddaughter Maribel, places her down, unzips her PJs and her skin, the skin on this little baby's chest is bright red. Her skin is peeling. She's got these angry, bright red marks all over her body.
Ka reaches over to peel off Maribel's skin near the chest. I don't know if it was an instinct. I don't know why she's doing that. Peel off? Just grab and peel. I guess maybe she's confused. I don't know. But Grandma Chua slaps her daughter's hands away. And within minutes, 911 is called. And within minutes of that, first responders are arriving at the scene. They're rushing into the house. What happened? What happened? What happened?
The consensus in the house seemed to be that the baby was accidentally dropped onto the space heater. And now she's unconscious. There was nothing the first responders could do. Within nine minutes, baby Maribel would be pronounced dead at the scene of the crime.
And there would just be so many questions that the authorities have now. Like, why is Maribel's body covered in burns, but her hair and her clothes aren't nearly as burnt? That doesn't make sense if she fell on the space heater. What happened during the 11 minutes that Maribel was left alone with her mom? And does it have anything to do with the little purple pacifier that they find inside the microwave?
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support Baby to Baby. They are a nonprofit that provides essential items to more than 1 million children across the country in shelters, domestic violence programs, foster care, hospitals, and underserved schools. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we would also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. A few quick disclaimers for today's case. There are mentions of CA resulting in death. There's pretty graphic descriptions of potentially how a two-month-old passed. If that is too much for you, please take care of yourself. And one last announcement before we get started. If you guys are looking for anything lighter, we just released a brand new podcast called MOTS or Moral of the Story where we cover these. It's basically
basically me telling my husband these wild stories of international celebrities that have been in some of the most bizarre scandals, the most desirable man in Japan that people are willing to spend half a million dollars a night to spend time with. So there's just a lot lighter stuff covered on there if you guys need a break. So you can listen to it now on all podcast platforms and on YouTube under Stephanie Su. So with that being said, let's get started. Ever
Everything about that day was beyond normal, or at least it's supposed to be normal before Mirabelle died. So Ka Yang's husband is this truck driver and he's gone for the whole day. He's not coming back for probably a few more days. In fact, sometimes he's gone for like two weeks at a time, but it's fine. The family always comes to help Ka so she's not alone. Her brother-in-law Va, so Ka Yang's brother-in-law, was at the house. He was living at the house when this happened. He's just helping her take care of the kids.
And on that particular night, even Ka-Ying's mom slept over the night before. So she's got a lot of support. So she can just focus on doing her work. She works from home and applying for benefits and taking care of the kids. They have four kids, three boys under seven and now two month old Mirabelle. Va, the brother-in-law, had just left the house to go pick the boys up from school. And when he walked out of the house, he remembers seeing Ka holding Mirabelle and working on her computer.
Ka's mom is out on the yard doing some yard work. And for the next 11 minutes, Ka and Mirabelle are alone. The police need to know what happened in those 11 minutes. They only have Ka's word, or at least initially, to go off of. And Ka said, I don't know what happened. I felt this weird pounding in my head. I saw this bright flash of white light. And that's all I remember.
That's it. The next thing she knows, she's waking up on the floor. She's laying on something wet. Her pants are drenched and she's like, that's my urine. She had wet herself and she had bit her tongue. Her tongue is raw. Like she bit off a chunk of it. She didn't actually bite off a chunk of it, but it felt like it.
It was just weird to have her memory wiped for however long that was. She was at her desk one moment and then on the floor of her bedroom, drenched in urine the next moment with no recollection of how she got there, what happened in between, nothing. So in this confused head pounding state, she gets up and she sees two month old Mirabelle on the ground laying next to her.
And her face, Mirabelle's eyes aren't open, but her whole face is bright red. She reaches over and Mirabelle is stiff. She's not breathing. She's not responding to touch. She's not moving. And Ka is now full on panicking. She says she picks up Mirabelle, rushes into the kitchen because that's where she assumed her mom would be at this point. Her mom rushes in through the back door. They rush to take off Mirabelle's pajamas. They notice all these...
Bizarre burn marks and they start freaking out. Va walks in through that door at the exact moment. He had left the house for 15 minutes to grab Kaz's sons from school. Now he's walking in and everybody's freaking out and Mirabelle is unconscious on the table and he would be the one to call 911. So Va is the brother-in-law and he just returned home with the sons? Yes.
Okay. Ka and her family agree. I mean, in this state, she must have fell on top of the baby on the space heater. She's holding Mirabelle, suffers a seizure, drops Mirabelle onto the space heater and almost squashes her. So she's on top of her sandwiching her onto the space heater. That's the only thing that makes sense, right? For these burns. But it doesn't make sense. Not even a little bit. Because how is Mirabelle burned head to toe, but her hair and pajamas are not that burned.
Both sides of her body are burnt. It would take the investigators three months to figure out exactly what happened to Mirabelle. They had a hunch, but to get the exact evidence that they needed to arrest Ka, it would take three months.
The experts working on the case said she has some deep tissue burns, probably the worst I'd ever seen. Another officer states, I mean, it's clear the child was burned, but the source, the source was mysterious. The burns are not typical of fire or acid injuries even. And there is damage to the baby's clothing, but not too much. And specifically, she had a radiation burns. That's very specific. One of the most common ways people get radiation burns is through chemotherapy, right?
If the radiation affects the healthy tissues, then it could lead to internal burns. Or let's say you have repeated and prolonged exposure to x-rays performed on the body. It could cause radiation burns. Or you could be near a nuclear accident. That's a radiation burn. Or your
mishandling radioactive materials. Those are the most common ways. This makes the situation even more confusing because by all accounts, Mirabelle is a healthy baby. She likely did not have enough x-rays to warrant radiation burns. She did not need chemotherapy. She's not near a nuclear plant or an accident. She would not be in a setting where she would handle radioactive materials. It's not something you just buy at the store. She's two months old.
And the level of the burns are extensive. The burns run so deep that it fried her internal organs. The police are quick to look for any other cases where this happened, where an infant was found deceased and had extensive radiation burns on their body. They come across two.
Joshua Maldon from Texas, his two-month-old daughter was found with second and third degree burns to her left ear, cheek, hand, and shoulder. She did survive, but her left ear had to be partially amputated and she had to have several skin grafts because of radiation burns. Joshua originally told the authorities that his daughter had suffered from severe sunburns. And when the authorities told him, we don't believe you, he stated, well, I might have also accidentally spilled hot water on her while I was making some coffee. But that all turned out to be a lie.
Then in Ohio, China Arnold's 28 day old daughter, Paris, was found badly burned after a fight with China's boyfriend. So China and her boyfriend get into this huge argument where the boyfriend is like, that's not my baby. You you slept with somebody else. That's not my baby. They get into this huge argument. And then Paris, the 28 day old daughter, is found dead with internal radiation burns.
In both cases, the children's injuries were consistent with baby Maribel. And in both cases, both children had been microwaved.
There are reasons why when you heat up food on the stove or in the oven or perhaps the microwave, they taste differently. Even if it's the same leftover pizza because they heat food differently. If you put pizza on the stove, the stovetop gets really hot, whether it's gas or electric, and then it heats up the pan and then you place the pizza on the hot pan.
An oven, it heats up the air inside the oven. So that's why when you open it, you get that rush of hot air. The air touches the food and heats up the pizza on the pan in the oven. Microwaves, they work a little bit differently. A microwave is essentially a device that boils water.
If you want to simplify it, it heats up water. Without getting too technical, a microwave works by firing these beams of electromagnetic waves at food. And these beams cause the water molecules inside the food to start rotating. And they start rotating faster and faster. And the water molecules, essentially, they start vibrating. And that vibrating friction produces heat because they're moving around back and forth, back and forth very quickly.
That's why an empty plate in the microwave does not get too hot because there's no water molecules to vibrate and heat up. To some extent, microwaves do heat and cook food from the inside, which I agree there is anecdotal evidence that the frozen burrito in the microwave is hot on the outside, cold on the inside. But that can be because of two different things. One, there are cold spots in microwaves because the radiation waves do not hit certain points of food. It literally does not go that deep.
But also the way that microwaves work, they bring that heat to the surface of the food. So to put it simply, water from inside the food turns into steam and tries to escape the food, but it can't escape. So it just liquefies again at the surface of the food, which is why most microwaved items are left a bit squishy, if you will. There are speculations on what could happen if you're trapped inside of a microwave, but
These are the speculations. If you're trapped in a microwave? Yes. I know that we're more commonly used to the household microwaves, but there's industrial strength microwaves where adult humans could fit into easily and the door could be locked. Whoa, that's like a horror movie. Yeah. So within the first few seconds, you will likely feel a warmth on your skin.
But other than that, the first 10 seconds will be more so confused panicking. It's around 11 seconds in that you might start noticing some weird discomfort in your eyes. The eyes go first. The human eyeball is made up of 98% water and those water molecules inside the eyeball are going to start vibrating and your vision is going to start vibrating. There was a woman who stuck her head in a microwave and somehow managed to turn it on. Please don't ever do this. It's...
But she stated that she felt her eyeball vibrating inside of her head. She said her vision was also vibrating. She's lucky that she did not lose her eyesight completely.
25 seconds in, there's going to be this prickly sensation on your skin. Like you're being poked by one of those cactus plants. It stings, but it's not the biggest pain you've ever felt in your life. Within 30 seconds, your body will start profusely sweating. It's a natural reaction to your body's temperature rising. And then around that point at 40 seconds in, you might notice some steam coming out of your body. Literally, you're generating steam. Those are the water molecules inside of your body that are now turning into steam.
45 seconds in, you start seeing blistering or skin starting to peel like you're having a really bad sunburn. That's going to include the surface of your tongue.
You might start to develop boils on your tongue that start to burst. At the 72nd mark, it is likely you'll have second degree burns, which are not the worst, but could still take several weeks to heal as long as you get out. But if you don't, if you're still trapped in there within the next five seconds, so one minute and 15 seconds in blood, pus, bodily fluids will start trying to break out of the skin barrier. They're going to start trying to force their way out of the layers of the skin.
You will likely be conscious for this. After 80 seconds, the fluid in the eyes becomes heated up, causing your vision to warp. It'll likely be incredibly physically difficult, near impossible to try and keep your eyes open at this point because of the pain. But once you close your eyes, your ears start going off. The pressure in your ears starts becoming unmanageable to the point where, you know how your ears are an important part of keeping balance? Once that's gone, you're going to lose all sense of balance. You're going to fall to the ground and not know which way is up.
Then comes the whistling. It sounds like there's water boiling inside of your ear and it's trying to get out. It's like an angry pot of pasta on the stove, but it sounds and feels like it's directly in your eardrum because it is. And we're only still 105 seconds in or one minute and 45 seconds. Again, this is a theoretical idea of what would happen, but it's guesstimated that after 110 seconds, most humans will collapse. The body will shut down, go into shock.
After two minutes, the eyeballs will pop. I mean, I don't think they're going to pop like balloons, but I imagine it'll erupt inside the eye socket or blood vessels will pop. Oh, wow.
Then comes the third degree burns. There may be bodily fluid seeping out of the eyes and the eardrums will rupture. We're just two minutes and 20 seconds in. It's going to be at the two minute and 25 second mark that the blood inside your body will likely start to boil, which makes the entire surface of your skin bright red. The smell will be intense at this point.
After 160 seconds, it will likely be unbearable to breathe and as you're focused on trying to get air into your system, the blood will thicken, coagulate, the water content in your body is rapidly dropping and you will be totally paralyzed from the nerve damage and shock.
After 200 seconds or 3 minutes and 20 seconds, one will likely suffer a debilitating stroke and after 5 minutes, there's going to be massive organ failure that leads to death. This is theoretically what would happen if you were to be trapped inside an industrial strength microwave, which is about 3000 watts of power. Most household microwaves are about 1000 watts of power. I imagine things will just take a bit longer, but torturous nonetheless and fatal nonetheless,
It essentially cooks you from the inside out. This is again, putting it simply, but just imagine all the water and likely the blood in your body starts to boil while it's inside your body. It's heating up inside your body and it can't really escape. It's just vibrating, causing friction, causing immense heat.
Depending on the power of the microwave, a human being might live for several minutes, but it won't be painless. Eyes, brains, veins, arteries, internal organs are heating up from the inside. Water molecules are starting to go from liquid to a gas state. Your body is generating steam. Most of the injuries will be internal and it is essentially being lit on fire, but from the inside.
Which doesn't make sense with Kai Yang's initial story that she had a seizure. She collapsed onto her daughter, onto the space heater and crushed her, burning her to death. She does not recall because of this said seizure. Now, it just doesn't make any sense with the injuries.
Side note, it is March in Sacramento, which is a bit chilly. It's customary for Hmong women, they're Hmong, to keep near a fire or a warm heater for a few months after giving birth. And Mirabelle is only two months old. So some people even questioned why was there a space heater? Why were they using a space heater? It wasn't cold enough for a space heater, they were saying.
But that's why there was a space heater on the ground right next to Kai Yang's work computer. So there is one there. But that doesn't make sense. A microwave does not heat up objects in the same way a space heater would. If she had fallen on the space heater, let's say she fell into the space heater on her back, she would have severe external burns on her back and she would not have that many internal burns. Yeah, and on the clothes, right? Yes. And Mirabelle's injuries are not consistent with that.
One of the officers in the investigation team states, "The child sustained unusual and rare thermal burns." The investigation revealed that these burns were consistent with only two or three other cases in the country with the same similar type of injuries, and that was determined that those injuries occurred as a result of being burned in a microwave. So they arrived at the scene, they heard the version of stories,
They obviously didn't believe it because it didn't look like that. And then they went back to the station and they found the other cases. When did they find the microwave? You say there's a pacifier. They found it early on, but they can't, you know, when you find a pacifier in the microwave, some people might think you're heating up the pacifier. Some people might think another kid, maybe the son put it in there. There's no evidence. There's no blood or anything in the microwave that would indicate, hey, someone was in the microwave. So they didn't make that connection right away.
They had an inkling. They had a suspicion, but it wasn't enough to arrest Kai Yang because she does have diagnosed epilepsy.
So it's not like her story doesn't check out completely. It just doesn't make full and complete sense to the investigators. They find the pacifier. They bring in Maribel to be autopsied. Her injuries are bizarre. They look through all the case files of weird incidents where children have turned up with similar injuries. They find those cases and they actually reach out to those forensic pathologists that worked on those cases. And they were able to say, yeah, this is extremely rare, but these seem to be the same injuries.
Because it's such a rare injury is how they're explaining it. It's not very clear. It's not like someone was stabbed or shot. It's very bizarre. So within three months, they gather enough evidence to come in and arrest Ka.
Because like I was saying, the injuries are extensive. Baby Mirabelle had injuries to over 80% of her body, external thermal injuries, as well as second and third degree burns on approximately 56% of her body. She had severe internal burns, including fourth degree radiation burns. Fourth degree radiation burns are among the most severe types of burns, right?
Fourth degree burns are probably the worst burns. It's extensive damage to the skin, the underlying tissues, and it reaches all the way down to the bones, the burns. Typically, people with fourth degree radiation burns are hospitalized in burn units. They need extensive care and monitoring to the point where surgery is likely required in order for them to remove the dead tissues.
There's going to be a lot of dead tissues. And most likely, if you even survive this, you're going to need physical therapy and extensive rehabilitation just to be able to regain mobility and function. There's no way that baby Mirabelle would have survived her injuries. The radiation, it penetrated her organs. It cooked her from the inside. The medical team bring in an expert, microwave oven expert, who bring up a few things, but
They were able to gather that Mirabelle was likely placed into a microwave on her back based on the burns. Additionally, they estimated that Mirabelle was placed into the microwave at at least two to three minutes at minimum. They can't be exact with their time, but they suspect if they had to get very, very close, perhaps five minutes is their best bet, factoring in the types of burns that she had. Mind you, she was only left alone with Kai Yang for 11 minutes.
But their observations indicate that she likely would have passed away in two to three minutes of being in the microwave. That the burns would have been fatal by that point. Mirabelle's official cause of death would be thermal injuries resulting in overexposure to microwave radiation in a microwave. Kai Yang had effectively cooked little baby Mirabelle on high heat. That's how they describe it. Her insides have been described as being fried from the inside.
The pathologist testified that the radiation from the microwave cooked through her stomach and small intestines. I don't think anyone, publicly at least, knows this about me, but sometimes I get so cold that I have to tuck these shakable hand warmers into my socks. And I swear my temperature runs about 10 degrees colder. I am always chilly. For example, my husband could be wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I'm in the same room, right next to him, in a puffer jacket.
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the investigators they sit kai yang and her mother down for an interview and they want to know what happened when you were alone with that baby because you did not fall on a space heater kai yang explains it was just a normal day everything was normal she gave mirabelle a bottle and a pacifier that morning i mean nothing was strange well nothing except there was something that was a
They were kind of almost like if you were tracking a fly or if you're doing a drunk driving test where you have to track side to side. Her eyes, it's like she was following a fly left to right. And that's when Ka checked and there was no fly. Ka would tell the investigators, it kind of scared me a bit, but she tried not to think anything too deep into it because she believed in God.
Okay, what is going on here? The investigators are so intrigued by this. This was not the line of questioning they thought they were going to go down. Wait, why? So she saw the baby looking left and right, like looking at a fly. Yes, flying around. But she thought it's okay because she believed in God? Yes, there was no fly. So it kind of freaked her out a little bit. Like, what is she looking at? Okay, okay. Because I guess to her, she's had multiple children and she's never seen babies two months old track like that.
Cause I guess babies will only look at certain objects that are moving around. And even then, I don't know if they do that well at two months old. So it sounds like she's getting freaked out. That's why she mentioned God. I see. And she's like, I'm getting freaked out, but I looked, there's nothing there. There's no fly, but that's fine because I believe in God.
And so the investigator, listen, I don't know. That's what she's saying. And the investigators are also like, what is going on? I don't understand. Now, Ka doesn't necessarily change her story per se, but she starts adding to it. In a subsequent interview with both Ka Yang and her mom, they both bring up the words spirits and possessions.
For the average interrogator, that is sending off massive alarm bells. What do you mean by that? Are you saying that the spirits made you do it? Is that what we're doing? Because that's a whole different story. That's a whole different defense, honestly. What are you saying exactly? The spirit called me so I had a seizure. Before the seizure, Mirabelle was moving her eyes back and forth looking at something. She was crying and spitting out her pacifier. What was she looking at? The spirit and demon together.
Through Kai Yang and her husband's statements, the authorities gathered that Kai Yang's new version of events included her seeing a Caucasian demon or spirit outside staring at her and Mirabelle through the window. So suddenly they're like, okay, you're seeing spirits. They're saying the baby's seeing spirit or she's seeing spirit? She's saying the baby's eyes were moving around like she's following a spirit. Then she looked out the window and there was a Caucasian demon staring at them.
Is what the investigators are gathering. Now, it's reported that Kai Yang told her husband that the spirit was walking around outside the house and wanted their baby. But as quickly as they come to this newfound story, it starts getting backtracked and clarified, if you will.
Kai Yang states that she never stated the spirit made her do anything. She does not have a history of talking to spirits or demons or taking direction from them. Then it's further clarified that Kai Yang was not talking about the spirits that the investigators believe she was referring to. In Hmong culture, many people believe epilepsy is when a spirit invades the body. A seizure is the spirit taking over, if you will.
Okay. Kai Yang's husband clarifies to the investigators that he himself is not one of those people. He thinks it's all bullshit. He's also a monk. He implies that Kai Yang is the same. Kai Yang and her husband are both members of the LDS church. So he's like, we don't believe in shamanism. We don't believe in the spirit taking over your body during a seizure. It's all bullshit. And at least according to Kai Yang's husband, he seems very adverse to all of it. He doesn't seem like he believes in it at all.
So this is getting weirder. They're saying, oh, no, no, no. When we were saying the spirit was happening, we're talking about the seizure. That's just how Hmong people talk about seizures is the argument.
So it's getting very confusing, I think, for the investigators, but also the general public to kind of decipher. So if you guys are among, please let me know in the comments. I tried to do as much digging as possible to get some background information. I did find some that we're going to go into, but it's just getting more and more complex. First, it's epilepsy, a seizure, a space heater. But now it's wait, are we talking about this is just the verbiage used or are we talking literal spirits?
what's happening here i see this isn't making sense so the court doc has sprinkles of mentions of spirits in it it's a bit vague in the court documents for some reason but it does seem that after mirabelle's death there's a three-month period like i said where cut is not arrested and she's at home with her family it's alleged that she had a priest come in and there were some concerns that the house was built on a cemetery who had concern the priest had the concern
It seems like Ka or her family had concerns. So now the police are like, well, wait, you said it was just kind of a way of speaking, but now you're bringing in a priest and asking if this house was built on a cemetery, which makes us believe that you believe in spirits. So now we're even more confused. Authorities state that Ka Yang allegedly told her mom, we live on a cemetery. We can't tell them the truth. They will think we're crazy. There's evidence? Yeah.
I don't know how they allegedly got this alleged conversation, but the investigators, they take it very seriously because in one interview, Kai Yang's brother does state that the authorities straight up asked him, "Hey, do you guys do human sacrifices?" Which is kind of a crazy, no, they don't. It's a crazy question to ask.
Now, there are some arguments that all of this is just lost in translation, that some of the cultural context is lost on the investigators, which makes all of this more complicated. The prosecution actually believe these types of behaviors to be in line with someone who might be suffering from undiagnosed postpartum psychosis. Someone who has all of this cultural background of believing in spirits. Now she's two months into alleged postpartum psychosis and she starts believing these spirits are real.
And they think she was in a state of psychosis and killed her child in a microwave. Whereas these types of conversations might not be so serious to someone of Hmong background. So it's complicated of how much of it is cultural insensitivity and how much of it is truth. We don't know. So for example, there's a whole book written about this, but there was this little girl in America. Her name is Leah.
She's Hmong. What's the book? It's called The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down is the name of the book. And it's about a little girl named Leah. She's Hmong. She lives in America. She's diagnosed with severe epilepsy. So this book is about how the doctors are struggling to understand her parents and the parents don't understand the doctors. It talks about how in Hmong culture, seizures are caused by your soul leaving your body, which translates to the title of the book, The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down.
Many Hmong people see illness and healing as spiritual matters. They think that your spirit has been
harmed or sick first and your physical body is the secondary reaction to it almost. So you need to heal that spirit first and heal within almost. Western medicine works in the complete opposite way. Who's to say who's right? So for example, in this book specifically, the doctor keeps prescribing anticonvulsants for the child. The parents opt to do traditional medicine and they don't feed her the anticonvulsants.
It becomes a whole thing where the doctors get CPS involved. The baby gets taken away from the parents and it angers a lot of people because at the end of the day, no one cares about that little girl as much as the parents do. They just don't believe in the same things that the doctors believe in. It's a tricky situation of, I think most people come out of the book not knowing who's right. Because when someone has a complete, our belief in Western medicine is probably as strong as their belief in traditional medicine. Right. Right.
Exactly. So it's very hard to argue. Now, the book talks about how in Hmong culture, having seizures is almost associated with having a special intuition. You're more spiritually connected because your spirit is leaving your body every now and then, which actually makes people with epilepsy great traditional healers. Side note, Hmong shamanism is all about healing.
So there's a huge emphasis on healing and it's an honor to be a healer. You're helping everyone around you. And it's fascinating because little Leah's parents in the book, they approach baby Leah's seizures with a mix of concern for their daughter, but also pride that she's almost chosen to be a healer, which is very honorable. Wow.
Okay. But the book points out all the cultural insensitivities held by the hospital and the doctors, because had they been a bit more culturally sensitive, I think this could have gone a completely different way. They could have better helped the parents understand why she needed the medication. Now there's questions of, is that what's happening here in this case again?
Because are they taking what they're saying too literally and being like, oh my God, she's possessed. Or is she really believing in spirits? So in this case, people are wondering, is this happening again? Are the police taking things too literally without factoring in the cultural aspects of how Hmong culture sees seizures? And they're like, oh, she said spirits. She said possession. She said she saw a spirit outside. She's possessed. She has psychosis. Whereas in Hmong culture, it might be, I saw a spirit outside yesterday.
I saw a white flash. I felt a seizure come on. So most people who have seizures, they can feel it coming. Things kind of get warped a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes in. So maybe that's just how she describes it, but it's not literally, I saw a demon outside my window.
Right, I see, I see. So it could literally mean that she's telling them that, oh, I'm having a seizure. I could feel a seizure coming and then I had a seizure and the seizure is associated with her spirit coming out of her body and spirits being involved, right? And she's just describing it in the way that she knows best to describe it. But they're like, whoa, spirit, you saw a demon outside? You have psychosis, lady. So it's just a matter of... Yeah, they have to understand that to make a fair...
on what they're trying to say. Now, she could very well be in a state of psychosis. I don't know, right? But it's just a matter of how much of it is misinterpreted. Eventually, Kai Yang will state that she does not believe in her epilepsy being controlled by spirits. She's like, I was just, the verbiage is known in the culture. So she's arguing, no, no, you're getting it all wrong. She also argues she would never hurt her daughter. She's been trying to have a daughter for two years.
years after having three sons she prayed every single day for a daughter why would she harm her daughter it's got to be the seizure something happened with the seizure she's trying to explain to them that she's had seizures for such a long time i mean since she was she's 29 at the time of the killing since she was 13 14 her first seizure was at her uncle's house and it was very clearly traumatic everyone hoped it would be a one-time incident but she was diagnosed with epilepsy
Since then, she had suffered about 100 seizures for the next 15 years, which is about six to seven every single year or once every two months. Wow. She states she's on anti-seizure medication. It's not like she's in denial trying to keep having seizures, but it's not working.
Side note, I will say that does seem common. Approximately 30 to 40% of people with epilepsy are resistant to medications. It happens for a wide variety of reasons. Perhaps the patient is not consistent with taking the medication or initially they respond well, but they build a tolerance. The dosage could be too low or some medications are just simply not effective. And there are different types of seizures. So if you have multiple types of seizures, the medication might not work for all of them.
But first, a seizure is when you essentially have abnormal electrical discharges in the brain. Think of your brain like a big computer. And sometimes the computer gets mixed up and starts sending way too many signals at once. Imagine opening up all of the apps on
on your computer at the same time simultaneously, it's gonna go into overdrive, overheat and probably shut down. That is a seizure. And not each seizure is the same. I think most of us picture the type of seizure that's depicted more often in movies or in media where someone falls to the ground and they start convulsing. But there's a lot of other types of seizures.
There's focal seizures where it just affects one part of the brain. One part of the brain almost zaps. It has an overwork. That's how it's described on Reddit by people who have epilepsy. You just feel part of your body feel very strange. Your hand tingles or you hear things that don't exist. I wouldn't say it's
auditory hallucinations. I wouldn't say you're hearing voices, but you're hearing buzzing, weird noises, frequency noises. And sometimes you know it's happening, sometimes you don't know what it's happening. You're just like, "Oh, that was weird. Why did my body do that?"
Then there are generalized seizures. They will also have sub distinctions, if you will. Absent seizures. It's like your brain takes a tiny nap. You just stop and stare for a few seconds, but you likely won't shake or have body tremors. You might not even know it just happened. You just take a mini nap with your eyes open.
Then there's simple partial seizures. This seizure only affects a specific portion of the brain. For example, it will cause your hands to shake uncontrollably, but the patient does not lose full consciousness. The whole body is not convulsing either, but it's
You definitely don't feel there. Some people describe it as similar to being on drugs. That's what it feels like. You can't control your body. Your memory feels a little bit weird. Everything feels a little bit wonky. Some people describe it as after those types of seizures, it just feels like deja vu. It's weird. It's just weird. I don't know what happened. It's weird. I don't feel comfortable.
Then you have complex partial seizures. This is where some body shaking happens, but also a partial loss of consciousness, meaning you're likely not going to remember what you're doing, but you're not going to be knocked out on the ground. Okay. People describe it as patients looking incredibly dazed or confused or having a blink stare that lasts for a minute or two. They're there. They're conscious technically, kind of, but
They're not really. Most of the time, they don't remember anything that happened during that period. With this type of seizure, patients could potentially still walk around and perform very simple tasks, almost on autopilot. I'm talking very simply, but almost repetitive movements, smacking lips, chewing, swallowing, picking up objects.
It seems to be something people do getting undressed, picking out clothes like they're removing lint or mumbling or occasionally people will get up and move around, go up and down the stairs or perform very routine stuff like moving objects, moving items around. But you can't sit down and start typing on Instagram. You can't like type out an email.
It's just very motor oriented, muscle memory type of movements. The best way some people have described it is kind of like sleepwalking. You're not going to respond to emails while you're sleepwalking most of the time, but you might do muscle memory things like pour coffee. They are typically not aware of their movements once the seizure passes. They have no idea what they just did. So they could have been walking up and down the stairs, taking off their clothes. And then when they come to, they're like, I don't know why I'm naked upstairs in the bedroom. I don't know how I got up here. Last I remember, I was on the couch.
Then you have the grand mal, the tonic-clonic seizures. This is usually a total loss of consciousness. This is, I think, what most people picture if they've never witnessed or had a seizure. The patient will, quote, collapse, stiffen, jerk, and they might bite their tongue, foam at the mouth, and empty their bladder. This type of seizure typically lasts one to two minutes, but because of how intense and traumatic they are for anyone to witness, people will typically overstate the length of this type of seizure.
which is what Kai Yang's family does. They say it lasts about five minutes, but that's very normal. Now, each patient with epilepsy can have more than one type of seizure. So it's not limited to, oh, each condition requires just one type of seizure. You could have two or three and you never know which one is coming next. It's not like in a pattern, but it doesn't really change over time. So within three years, you typically don't get a new type of seizure.
Meaning each patient tends to have the same seizures over and over and over again. Now, Kai Yang and her family state that she had a few different types of seizures. In almost all of them, she has no recollection, no memory of what happened during her seizure. She could be standing, sitting, doesn't matter. The first thing she'll notice is her hands start to curl up. Her body or certain parts of her body start to shake very slowly. Then she only knows what people tell her because around this point, she blacks out.
Her eyes will roll to the back of her head. She makes these intense, painful groaning and moaning noises. And within a few minutes, she'll finally come to and realize she's on the floor or she's passed out on the couch. The only indications that she has that she suffered a seizure are she had bitten down on her tongue so hard she can now taste blood or her tongue is so swollen she can barely talk or other times she loses control over her bladder and she'll wake up in a giant wet puddle.
Her head will also start throbbing like it's going to explode and her body feels so sore. The way she describes it, it feels like she climbed up a massive tree in the backyard and then just let go, just fell from the top of the tree. She's out for typically two minutes. But most of the people who have witnessed Ka Yang's seizures say, yeah, there's no way that she could really do much during them. She definitely can't work on her computer or drive right after. It's just not possible.
They argue she doesn't walk around or do anything after the seizure. Typically, whoever is around will try to get her to sit down or lay down. It's very clear that she feels very dazed and very low energy because after a seizure, there's what they call the haze phase by people who have epilepsy. It's called the postictal period, but it's
You're not really there right now. It takes about 30 minutes sometimes for someone to reboot their brain essentially They might not even remember most of the hazy phase Some people say they don't remember like an hour during the seizure the seizure and then the hazy phase They're like, I don't remember any of that, but they are like doing things like they're still hazy phase You're usually conscious
You're usually conscious, but I guess your brain is not. I don't know if it's something with the hippocampus and you're not forming these memories actively. So not like fully. Yes. So a lot of people who even have the grand mal seizures, the tonic-clonics, where they're completely unconscious, even when they awake, there's maybe 10 to 20 minutes where they don't remember anything, even though they're awake. I see. And everyone is like, are you okay? They don't remember any of that. And then 20 minutes later, they're like, wait, what just happened? I don't.
And they're like, we told you for the past 20 minutes you had a seizure. Wow. They say it takes Kat about three to four hours just to recover to the point where she quote regains her senses, which this part is interesting because nobody saw Kat in that state that day.
Even before the authorities are called, Va, the brother-in-law, gets home. He notices Kai Yang and her mom hovered over the baby, freaking out. He was gone for literally 15 minutes. He had walked out to pick up the sons, saw his sister-in-law on the computer working, walked out, and when he walked back in, all hell had broken loose. Va was the one that called the police, but he did notice something that...
Just wasn't clicking. His sister-in-law, Ka, was acting a bit different compared to all the other times he's ever seen her have a seizure. She was even able to listen to 911 operators instructions on how to give CPR. She performed mouth to mouth while Va did the chest compressions. Again, just not what he usually saw when she had a seizure. She's standing. She's alert. She's making eye contact and seems fairly calm. Not at all dazed.
He can't even really recall if she seemed disoriented or not, but he knew that she was responding and answering to his questions in those moments. Nothing suggested to Va that his sister-in-law just had a seizure.
but you could argue that, sure, normally she's dazed, but right now is not the time because normally when she comes out of a seizure, her kids are safe. But adrenaline might take over in that state. She could be acting abnormally because this is an abnormal situation that she's in. So each side has pretty good arguments. I wouldn't be able to say which one is more valid. If you guys have epilepsy or have ever dealt with seizures, I think it would be more enlightening to read your comments about it. I don't know.
I don't know if Va himself is skeptical because he does go on to state that Ka Yang is a loving mother who would never harm her children on purpose, but that's just what he tells authorities he observed that day. It was not aligned with how he remembers Ka to behave after seizures.
Authorities, however, don't have the same sympathy as Va do. They are very, very skeptical about all of this. The first responders that arrived at the scene minutes after 911 was called, they stated from their very limited observations of Kai Yang, nothing suggested to them that she had suffered a seizure recently.
other than her telling them that she did. One officer said Kai Yang kept repeating she had a seizure and didn't know what happened, but they noted she was alert, standing, making eye contact. She did not appear to be confused or disoriented. One of the officers that spoke with Kai Yang right after Mirabel was pronounced dead states that she actually appeared, quote, fairly calm. She did not appear to be in a weakened state or in a physically exhausted state, but that could be due to shock.
That's what the officer says. It could be due to shock. Now, they all note that they did not smell urine, but they also didn't check her clothes for urine. And it could be argued that fresh urine isn't as smelly or as strong in scent, especially if they're in a house that just had a baby be microwaved to death. And just a lot of kids in general, that smell might not have stood out to them as, oh, she urinated on herself.
But what I think is more telling is they never noticed any tongue injuries on Kai Yang's tongue. But also, I don't know if they even checked and maybe she was able to communicate better once the police got there.
That's one thing that a lot of netizens are upset about. After Mirabelle was pronounced dead, why wasn't Kai Yang given medical attention? Because if she had suffered a seizure, she needs medical attention. And let's say she hadn't suffered a seizure, it would have been so much easier for the prosecution to show evidence there's no way she had a seizure because she had been evaluated by medical professionals right after. But they didn't. The first responders and the officers, they do admit they breached protocol by not assessing her medical condition at that point.
Wow. Okay. But eventually it's been reported that Kai even admitted to the authorities that she could not have suffered a seizure during that time because she didn't fall down. You say she admitted that? Yes, but there's questions about all of this.
She admits it, but keep in mind, there's two ways to take this. Some people think, whoa, she just admitted consciously to knowing that she did not have a seizure. She just admitted it. But what the defense argues is she's clearly disoriented when she's responding to some of the questions. She never received medical attention and she's saying whatever the authorities want her to say. She seemed like she was in a slightly confused state of...
I guess what they're arguing is likely what she responded was, well, yeah, typically I do collapse. So I guess that doesn't make sense either. All of this is confusing is more so what they're trying to say. She was implying the authorities do admit that near the end of questioning, Ka did appear confused.
So in the beginning, when they get there, she seems pretty clear. And then she starts slowly getting very disoriented. And she straight up tells them, it's just that after my seizure, my brain keeps hurting for a couple hours before it gets back to normal. The defense argued, see, this is her just saying whatever the police are suggesting because she's clearly confused, which might explain what comes next. The next version of events, according to Kai Yang, is that no, she did not have a seizure, but she does have DID.
This is from the defense team? No, this is from Kai Yang before she, I guess, attorney-ed up. She states that she has a, quote, split personality and maybe an alter did this because she has no recollection of any of these events.
This part has been argued both ways by people. One group of people who believe she's doing everything she can just to find anything that sticks. Maybe this way she can try and get an insanity plea. Another group of people who believe this girl is so desperate to make sense of what's going on and what happened that she's offering up any solution and explanation because wouldn't it be in her best interest to not say all of this?
To just keep going with the seizure. But some people see it as she's so frantic. She's so confused. She's like, maybe it was this. I don't know. Maybe it was this. I don't know. Maybe it was this. Nothing's making sense. I don't know. Maybe it's all of these things. She seems, they think, she seems like she's coming from a place of trying to make sense of what happened. Regardless of which side you're on so far, it is up to the jury to decide what's going to happen to Kai Yang.
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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. The defense's argument goes as follows. That day, Kai Yang was holding Mirabelle at her desk while working. All of a sudden, her head starts throbbing, the ache in her body becomes unbearable, her tongue feels swollen, and then nothing. She doesn't remember anything from that point forward.
She had a seizure. Kai Yang says, I never thought that with my seizures, I would lose my little girl. So the defense is saying, forget the DID, forget the spirits. What happened is she had a seizure and she microwaved her baby. So they're dropping the space heater. They're dropping the spirits. They're dropping everything. And the defense is saying she had a seizure and she microwaved her baby.
She had a seizure and then in a very unconscious or semi-conscious state, she did this action. Yes.
She didn't know what she was doing, but she microwaved her baby. She did do the actions. She just didn't know she was doing that because she had a seizure. Kai Yang stated, I never thought that with my seizures, I would lose my little girl. She states she never had any sort of fear of even dropping her kids if she was holding them when a seizure came on. She claims she does not remember what happened during the incident, just that she was at her computer desk and
and quote, "When I got up, my little girl was not breathing." They also argued that Kai Ying has two types of seizures. Yes, the one where she goes completely unconscious and she falls to the ground convulsing, but also she has another one. And people who know her have reported, yes, I've seen these types where they call it a quote, "fast seizure." That's what her friends and family call it. She could be sitting on the couch, she's not passed out, her body doesn't shake too much, but when she comes to, she doesn't remember a single thing that happened.
Her eyes are open. She just looks very dazed. She looks like she's very out of it. And if you're talking to her, you want to be like, hello, are you there? What happened? Did you just hear me? And she does not remember.
The defense's main argument is that either she had one of those seizures where she could still be moving around and she could be doing things in an automatic way, or she had a clonic tonic where she did fall to the ground, fall unconscious, but she awoke in a hazy period. And in that hazy period, she microwaved her baby. So they're saying because nobody assessed her medically, we don't know which one, but it seems like either way, it's completely a result of her seizure. That's what they're arguing, right?
But at the same time, the expert that testified on behalf of the defense, the doctor, he does admit it is an alarming number of buttons that needed to be pressed on the microwave to make it run for five minutes. He said it would indeed be remarkably rare for a mother to put her baby in the oven and turn it on. It would be like two comets colliding. So her having a seizure, then her placing the baby in the microwave.
He states, quote, just absolutely incredible in terms of the odds of it happening. They do admit that it would just be very odd for a woman to put her baby in the microwave in that state. But it wouldn't be the most rare thing for a person with a partial complex seizure to operate a microwave. But the defense attorney points out, well, listen to the testimonies of people who have witnessed Ka Yang having these seizures. They all state that afterwards they need to help her lay down or make her sit down, indicating that Ka would try to get up.
as an automatic response. It seems like she tries to move around quickly after seizures. If nobody is there to persuade her not to, what would she do? They also point out the fact that Kai Yang has never tried to hurt anyone during the time that she's had close to 100 seizures. So their argument being, it's not like she just had a seizure and is suddenly inclined to become violent. There's some netizen arguments that I don't think were brought into court. Not that I think netizen arguments should be brought into court. Like, hey, did you guys know a netizen said, but they
But they don't even argue the concepts that the netizens are arguing. I'm sure they have their own reasons. But a lot of netizens wonder if setting the microwave for five minutes is a very normal thing for Ka to do repeatedly. Is that something like muscle memory? Does she have a dish that she cooks every day that requires five minutes in the microwave? Does she defrost meat by just putting it in the microwave for five minutes? Perhaps she was trying to warm up some baby milk.
And she believed she was putting water into the microwave for a few seconds, but it ended up being five minutes, which is a very long time to heat water. But that could explain a bit more. But there's been no statements made of how she warmed up bottles or what she ate or how she used the microwave on a daily basis. But that, I think, could explain if she was doing something as a muscle memory. Yeah.
The defense mainly just argues Ka has no history of child abuse. She has no criminal record. She wasn't in a bad mood that day. She actually had so much help. Her brother-in-law was picking up the kids from school. Her mom is right outside. If she ever felt overwhelmed by Mirabelle, why would she just not reach out to them? By all accounts, Ka was a loving mom. That's their argument. That there is nothing to indicate that she had anything but maternal feelings towards all of her children, including two-month-old Mirabelle.
A family spokesperson argued, she didn't know what she was doing. She's a gentle, nice woman. She would never intentionally harm her child. Her mind was out of reality. Her lawyer argues, she suffers from epilepsy. She had an epileptic seizure. It was not deliberate conduct.
The defense team argues that it appears to be intentional conduct because the nature of the seizures, but quote, but the truth is her actions are sort of automatic. It's robotic. It's not the product of careful and rational thought. Because also, if she wanted to kill her kid, would she do it when there's so much going on? When she knows that the brother-in-law is about to walk in through the front door in a few seconds, her mom is out in the backyard?
Hmm.
And to show you how serious her seizures are, the defense brings up that just a week before Mirabelle's death, Kai Yang woke up in the hospital, very confused, very disoriented, with no recollection of what just happened. She didn't know what was going on. She didn't know why she was in the hospital. In fact, most of the times after seizures, she really is confused why there's paramedics. She doesn't even recognize that they're here for her.
They state that she had been driving and suffered from a seizure. The only thing she stated she remembered was remembering the feeling of seeing someone right in front of her.
Now, I don't believe that there was someone right in front of her or perhaps they moved out the way because I couldn't find any additional information on this incident. I imagine if she hit a pedestrian or somebody else was involved in the collision, it would have been referenced a lot more in the court docs. But it is interesting that she states she saw someone before that seizure as well. So keep that in mind. But the main focus here is she was confused. She woke up in the hospital with no memory. This is something that happens because of her seizures.
What?
Three months after the death of Mirabelle, Kai Yang was arrested and she was pregnant at the time of her arrest. The defense claims just like the epilepsy issue when Kai Yang was arrested, when she was in jail, she repeatedly stated that she's pregnant, but they took over a week to get the pregnancy test done and confirm that yes, indeed, she is pregnant and requires special attention.
The prosecution argues all the opposite points. They rely on the fact that nobody believes that Kai Yang suffered a seizure that day. At least no one on the prosecutor's side. They think that she's using her epilepsy as an excuse. They argue her seizures are so severe that she wouldn't even be able to use a microwave. The point about Kai Yang not liking to drive, that's another indicator. The prosecution feels like that shows she's incapable of doing much when she's suffering from a seizure.
It's stated that Kai Yang seizures would be so bad. Like I said, she'd be so confused when paramedics show up and she has no recollection. So how is she so alert and aware when the authorities show up?
In addition to that, one thing that stands out to investigators is Kai Yang shows almost no emotion during the investigation the day of Mirabelle's death. They say it's just odd behavior. Sure, you could have had a seizure, but you're not too disoriented from answering most of the questions in a way that's coherent. But your emotions feel very cold. She seems calm. The officer questioning her does state, yeah, it could be shock.
But the prosecutors do note it. The prosecution do hire a neurologist, Dr. David. He has a specialty in epilepsy and they just want him to testify at first. Now, when he first goes over all the case files, he writes that he does not think that the prosecution should prosecute for murder. He wrote that there is enough possibility, probability really, that Kai Yang may have suffered from a seizure.
But once he's given a more accurate quote, precise timeline, he changes his mind. He said, yeah, no, this does not make sense because there's only an 11 minute time span that all of this takes place. At 1 58 PM, Kai Yang was using her computer for work, something that she would not be able to do during her seizure, even in the hazy phase after the seizure. So that means she had her seizure right after because her brother-in-law leaves around that time. Yeah.
Then she wakes up from the seizure, places her baby in the microwave, performs a semi-complex action of pushing at least three buttons to start the microwave, then took the baby out, brought the baby to her mother while appearing to be panicked, yet mostly coherent by 2.10 p.m. So he's saying even if she did this in her hazy period, the hazy period should last longer than this. Right, right, right.
I see. He said it does not make sense. He states that after each seizure, there is a postictal hazy period, which lasts anywhere between 10 to 20, maybe even 30 minutes, where it's just very uncommon for people to perform complex actions such as use a microwave, operate a computer. But even if they do do that, it would be very difficult for her to snap out of it and now answer these questions very coherently. Tell her brother-in-law what happened. Call the police. Perform mouth-to-mouth.
But then again, how many instances are there where mothers have to snap out of it because the adrenaline of their kid potentially dying?
So it's just kind of a bit of a confusing situation. Now, after reviewing the precise timeline where this all takes place within 11 minutes, Dr. David decides to testify for the prosecution. Another reason that Dr. David probably testified is the exact microwave that was used in their house. It's suggested by the microwave expert, judging from Mirabelle's burns, that she was in there for five minutes.
They're trying to figure out how many keystrokes, how many buttons does it get to set it for five minutes to have the microwave run for that long. They try all sorts of methods and the most obvious is pressing five zero zero and then start. So four buttons. If you press just start, nothing happens. If you press five and start, you get five seconds. If you do five zero and start, you get 50 seconds. There's a lot of different ways to do this.
There is an add a minute button, which you would have to press five times to get to five minutes. The quickest way they state that you can get to five minutes is three button presses. Baked potato, baked potato, start. They're saying every single press is a lot for someone who's in that stage. Yeah, it's very, it's very complex process.
they're describing it. Now, I'm curious as to which make and model the microwave is because I wonder some microwaves, you can do a long press on a number and instead of seconds, they do minutes. I'm sure they've gone through that. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I feel like they must have, or some microwaves have presets, but I didn't see mentions of any of that from the defense, which I feel like they, well, actually, I don't know if they would have brought up. I also imagine the baby will be crying.
I was thinking that too. Right? For minutes even. So I don't know if that makes a difference. I have no idea, but I imagine that's probably what's happening. Yeah.
Now, the prosecution believes that if it's not a seizure, which they don't believe her to be in a seizure at that point, then it must be postpartum depression and perhaps psychosis. Mirabelle was born just two months ago, and statistically speaking, postpartum is most commonly observed within the first three months after childbirth.
They argued that, sure, there's no rule book on who's more likely to get postpartum, but there are some things to look out for. And it could be reasonable that Ka Yang had postpartum. That's what they're arguing. Their belief is that Ka was frustrated that day with Mirabelle. She's postpartum. She's on the verge of snapping. She's potentially having a bit of psychosis. She's seeing spirits and demons outside the window, a Caucasian demon. And that particular day, they argue Mirabelle was more fussy than normal.
This is the morning schedule. I mean, think about how overwhelming this is while you're dealing with all these
complex hormonal changes of postpartum, but also potentially seeing spirits. The morning starts at 5 a.m. Kai Yang has to go online to work by 6 a.m. They got to get Mirabelle out of bed at 7 a.m., change her diaper because she's crying. Then you glance over at one point and you see that the three sons are awake and playing video games before school. She states that she has to school the kids to put down the games and go get ready for school. The boys don't listen to her. Instead, one of them sneaks over to play with Mirabelle on the ground. And then now she's screaming, hey, be gentle with her, please. Like, don't be so rough.
take a shower. She's got to go back to work on her computer. And while she's glancing around, she's walking around, picking up after the boys. She walks into the bathroom and sees that one of her sons has spilled water out of the tub while getting ready. And he's still not listening. He's back to playing with Mirabelle and not getting ready for school. She grabs Mirabelle from her son, puts her in the bouncy chair, has to get started on breakfast. She's checking her computer periodically because she can't get a good session in with work.
Since Mirabelle keeps crying, she wants to eat, which means she has to now get the bottle ready. Then the pacifier. Va, the brother-in-law, is helping out here and there. Ka's mom is over in the back, but she's mainly outside. But still, the prosecutors argue...
it's totally normal for a mom with postpartum and potentially psychosis to feel overwhelmed and frustrated in this state, in this environment. And maybe that triggered something. She's overstressed, overstimulated, constantly running after her kids, and they believe in this moment she killed her child. She would not have been the first mother to have done that, nor will she be the last till we start taking postpartum seriously.
The prosecution brings up privileged medical files to prove their point, which does become a bit of an issue later. But August 2011, a few months after Mirabelle's death, Ka does admit to a doctor, quote, there were voices talking in her head and she would try to cope with them by pushing them out and not paying attention to them. She said sometimes it was successful. Other times it felt like someone kept coming up behind her.
She stated to her doctor that she told her husband and priest about this, and they said that she was only in her head about it and just not to pay attention. She said after Mirabelle's birth, she wasn't eating much. She had an increase in, quote, auditory hallucinations, is how the doctor describes it, as well as an increase in seizures. But she didn't align with postpartum depression.
She said after her daughter's death, the seizures and hallucinations decreased, but she felt more depressed. She said she didn't tell anyone about the auditory hallucinations because she was scared everyone would label her as crazy. You say she feel more depressed? Yes. So she's saying before she killed Mirabelle, she was having more seizures. She was hearing stuff, but she didn't feel depressed. Right. After Mirabelle's death, she's having less seizures. She's not hearing much, but she feels very depressed. Hmm.
She doesn't really describe in depth what the auditory hallucinations were saying, but on one occasion, she does state that she heard a voice telling her, hey, I'm back. But that's it. What? No other quote interactions, if you will.
Another thing that the investigators point out is the fact that Kai Yang stated in the initial interview the day of the incident, she went out back to the back of the house to look for her mom because she was panicked. They thought it was strange that she didn't look for Va, who would likely already be in the house and be very alert and ready to assist. And unless she was conscious enough to see him leave.
But Kai Yang's mom would argue that she never actually came to the back. She went into the kitchen and Kai Yang's mom was the one that opened the back door to get inside. They argue, actually, the fact that Kai Yang states that she went out back looking for her mom is another show that she has no idea what she's saying. She's not in her right mind. Personally, I think both sides have their little arguments of everything else. But this argument seems a bit moot point. I feel like if something were to be wrong with a little two month old baby, I would look for my mom rather than my brother in law. Mm hmm.
But this becomes a huge point of contention for both parties for some odd reason. In the end, the prosecution argued that the jury should find Kai Yang guilty as she cooked her baby on high heat like a piece of meat. There are a few theories with this case because this case is weird. There doesn't seem to be malicious intent.
It does not appear to be that this is a clean cut case of overwhelmed mom postpartum. She's upset. She's shaking her baby because she's so frustrated. There doesn't seem to be signs of that. So it's just confusing what actually happened. So people have come up with a few theories. The first theory being that Kai Yang is telling the truth and she did suffer a seizure and likely does not remember what happened afterwards. That's why her story keeps changing.
She was able not to be so dazed and confused when she came to because her daughter's life is on the line. And people state that you just cannot underestimate a mother's adrenaline rush when she notices and feels that her daughter is about to die. Those who think that she did not do this on purpose point to a few things that don't make sense. Kai Yang was scolding her son earlier for playing so roughly with Mirabelle. Why would she do that if she's so overwhelmed and stressed and doesn't care for her kids?
She just cared about getting work done on her computer. Would she even notice? And would she even scold her son for that? And why not just hand the baby over to your family members that are inside the house if you're that overwhelmed? There's also a lot of evidence that people have done very strange things while suffering from a seizure. Some netizens online have spoken about their seizures and they said, I usually lose about 10 to 20 minutes.
I record my vocals when I can because I have this very deja vu feeling that comes over and I need to remember recording, but I will have zero memory of all of this and no memory of the 10 and 20 minutes that I'm responsive after the seizure. People could be asking me questions I don't remember. Another one states, I never remember much of anything. This last Sunday, I had eight seizures and the entire day, complete blank to me. One netizen states, I've been told I made scrambled eggs during my seizure.
Yeah, and I also messed up my knee. Another netizen states, Wow, so a lot can happen. Yes, and it doesn't seem coherent either.
Because I'm assuming this person would not do this when they're not suffering from a seizure. Right, right, right. Like try to climb into a drawer. Like that doesn't make sense with the functioning conscious. It feels very abnormal. You might not just do muscle memory things is what some of these anecdotal pieces of evidence show. Now, another person states, I once had a seizure at home and broke a plate. And then when I was still extremely loopy, I hid the pieces of a plate in a box in my room because I didn't want to get in trouble with my mom.
So during her seizure, she's conscious enough to hide these things. And she says, I live alone. I was in the shower. My boyfriend had called the paramedics. I'm standing there naked with the shower off after a full blown seizure. They're trying to hand me clothes to help me get dressed. And what do I do? I kept trying to be helpful. So I was repeatedly folding the clothes and handing them back to the paramedics.
I of course recalled none of that, but my boyfriend said there were like three ambulances worth of paramedics in our living room and they had to keep swapping out of who was trying to get me dressed because they were laughing so hard and I just kept doing it. A lot of people with epilepsy seem to agree that you can do very strange things during a seizure. I don't know. I think that's why this case, it's very hard for me to have an opinion. I mean, I try not to have an opinion on most cases, but for this one entirely, because I've never had a seizure before.
It sounds at first glance, if I know nothing about seizures, it sounds incredible. It sounds, I don't believe it. But then once I start reading about it, I'm like, wow, okay, weird stuff does happen. So it seems that most people with epilepsy do agree that strange things can happen during a seizure, but the prosecutors do not believe it to be possible. Then there's the more unhinged theory where they've taken out
the seizures and replaced it with, I guess, the spirits and demons. So Dr. Resnick, the psychiatrist that's testifying for the defense, he stated it doesn't make sense for Ka Yang to kill her child. There's only a few reasons why a mother would kill her child. According to his research, he believes each reason can be somewhat categorized into five. One, an unwanted child.
Two, revenge against their spouse. Three, overzealous discipline. Four, psychosis and or a similar mental affliction. And five, altruism.
So the defense has been arguing that psychosis is the motive, which she's not exactly in a state of psychosis, but stating that she was in a state of confusion and delirium after her seizure. So she harmed her child without noticing. But one netizen on a Chinese forum actually commented something that a few people found very fascinating. The fifth motive, altruism, the idea that a mother is saving her child from a fate worse than death. That's what that category symbolizes.
The netizen theorizes that maybe it's a combination of everything. Again, this is just a theory. I do think it's one of the more unhinged theories, but they argue, what if it's a little bit of everything? The lingering cultural belief that she maybe doesn't particularly believe in, but is always around her.
that a seizure is her spirit leaving her body. Maybe there's a bit of undiagnosed postpartum there and Ka Yang's own complicated feelings towards her seizures and epilepsy. They theorize that perhaps the mentioning of Mirabelle's eyes moving back and forth may be caught in that very strange mental state, believe that Mirabelle was seeing a spirit. And if that's the case, all of the other verbiage that she might've been surrounded by with seizures being connected to spirits, she thought...
her daughter was going to have seizures later in life because seizures are also genetic. And having lived with the past 15 years with seizures and living the complexities of that, this netizen theorizes it could have been possible that Kai Ying wanted to save her daughter from that fate. Kai Ying did mention to authorities that she had thoughts of self-exiting when she was younger because of her seizures, but she knows she cannot even entertain those thoughts because her children need her.
The netizen argues this theory also confirms the fact that Kai Yang has been nothing but a great mother to her kids up until this point. Not that what she did is right, but it may align more or less with her wanting to protect her kids in some sense. Wow. Yeah, I think they point out the fact that it's just her talking about Mirabelle's eyes and even noticing that and bringing it up.
Seems like she put some focus into it because I'm sure so much happened that day. But her to keep that focus on the eyes moving back and forth seems a bit strange.
But it is a wild theory. Then lastly, you have the theory that either Kai Yang was suffering from postpartum, a seizure, a combination of everything, and she killed her baby and she should be found guilty of murder. Which I don't know enough about this case or epilepsy or even really postpartum psychosis to form an adequate opinion. But
I don't know if this theory makes as much sense when you really keep looking into it, mainly because she could have reached out to her mom that was outside. So unless it's confirmed she's having hallucinations and was suffering from a state of psychosis, I just can't wrap my head around her just being frustrated and overwhelmed and wanting her baby to stop crying.
There's no indication that Mirabelle was being extra fussy that morning. And on top of that, postpartum psychosis is a pretty, pretty strong thing. People will notice it. They say it's very rare for people to not have inklings of it. So unless all her family is deciding to not say anything at all, it just, you might not identify it as postpartum psychosis, but you'll typically, you'll be like, Ooh, okay. Something is going on here.
Something very strange is going on here. In the end, Kai Yang was found guilty of first-degree murder and assault on a child resulting in death. She was sentenced to 25 years to life. Kai Yang's attorneys stated after the verdict, we're just very disappointed and believe it was the wrong verdict. Justice was not served today. This is such a tragedy. This child was a victim of Miss Yang's epilepsy of her disease. It was not deliberate conduct on behalf of Miss Yang.
In prison, Kai Ying has given birth to a baby girl who is now under the care of her father along with her three brothers. While she's in prison, Kai Ying's sister died from a seizure while Kai Ying was in prison. So it does seem like, yeah. The family argued it's very clear that both the daughters have very, very serious conditions.
The defense has appealed the verdict, and their main appeal is based on the fact that Mirabelle's pediatrician, so the baby's doctor, testified during the trial for the prosecution. I don't, I'm not coming for the doctor. I don't think it's the doctor's fault. I think if anyone told me to testify or be on the stand in regards to a baby dying, I would do it. But the prosecutors were not technically legally right in the fact that they asked her to testify.
So it's the prosecution's fault. The main reason being the same doctor that's on the stand testifying for the prosecution talking about all the symptoms of postpartum depression psychosis is the same doctor that screened Kai Yang for postpartum depression and determined that she was negative.
OK, sure. Many of the tests are not accurate and moms are really great at masking their pain and emotions because that's what society makes them do. But legally speaking, you can see how it's a weird pickle to be in. Imagine if your doctor screened you negative for tapeworms, but it's suddenly on the stand talking about how tapeworms can impact your decision making. But you're like, you're the one that screened me negative for tapeworms.
So how can you talk about it as if I have tapeworms when you are the doctor? Does that make sense? It's just weird. Yeah, yeah. How did that happen? I do think Kai Yang's case is a situation where I don't know if her attorney was the best. I don't know if her defense was the best. I feel like they could have brought in way better experts to testify for epilepsy and the weird behaviors that can be conducted during a seizure. But yeah,
It just seems very messy. So right now it sounds like it's kind of confusing on what exactly happened. Yeah, and the defense team argued that the prosecutor failed to provide sufficient evidence that Kai Yang was diagnosed or even exhibited symptoms of postpartum psychosis.
So they keep- So they're arguing about the postpartum, but then they're proving that, no, she does not have, therefore, she's first degree murder. Yes. So for example, no, that's, okay. Basically, the prosecution is saying, we think she had postpartum psychosis. Right. Because when you have postpartum psychosis, you could microwave your baby because you're losing your mind. Right?
Right. They bring in a doctor. The doctor tested her negative for postpartum, but continues to talk about how postpartum psychosis could make a mother kill her child. But it's like, wait, you just said that you screened her negative for it. So how are you talking about it? Then the prosecution keeps going and is like, see, she's got postpartum psychosis. Thus, she killed her child. But they didn't provide enough evidence to actually prove that she has that.
So it's almost like someone arguing that if your blood type is B, you could kill someone, but they don't even bring in evidence that your blood type is B. Okay. Doesn't that make it moot point then? Like, what are you talking about? Exactly. That's the whole appeal. They're using that as the appeal. The whole appeal is look at what the prosecutors did. That's absolutely unhinged behavior. Yeah. You guys theory is completely flawed. Therefore, my opinion,
or Ka Ying deserve a retrial or whatever it is, right? Yes. The defense also argued that the verdict needs to be appealed because, again, there's truly no proof that she had postpartum to the point of being in a state of psychosis to kill her child, to microwave her child. It's just, I mean, they keep arguing it's quite dramatic. Their expert says postpartum psychosis is really quite dramatic. It's not something that goes unnoticed. Right.
So there's no evidence really. Then we need a retrial. That's the basis of the prosecution's argument. And the prosecution was just making some wild statements. And again, I say this as someone who is fully confused on what to believe at this point, which is objectively speaking, they're wild for some of these. The prosecution at one point tries to push the statistic that 41% of women with mental illness and depression had thoughts of harming their child. Where did you get that from? There is one study that showed those results, but I find it.
I wouldn't consider it reliable. I mean, perhaps it is, but I imagine you would have to look at the study's sample size, methodology, and peer review status, but it sounds problematic. Yeah, it's just a crazy statement to make. Yeah, it's just crazy, especially when you factor in the fact that Kai Yang has consistently denied being depressed. And the whole study is about depressed mothers have thoughts of harming their child. And she's like, I have never been depressed. Right?
And you screened me negative for postpartum depression. So like, how can you even use this statistic? It doesn't make sense. And I'm not saying that Kaiying is okay. I think clearly something happened for her to microwave her baby, whether that be a seizure, whether that be psychosis, whether that be, I don't know, right? But there are just certain things that the court has to do in order to ensure a fair trial. And this just wasn't fair.
Ultimately, the judgment has been reversed. That does not mean that Kai Yang is free. She's currently still in prison to see if the prosecutors want to try her again, if she's going to have a retrial or if they're just going to drop the charges. If you have epilepsy, I would really love to know your thoughts because I keep going back and forth with this case. But the few things that I think I'm pretty certain of, I don't think the defense did the best job.
I think, I mean, even just looking online at some of these doctors and some of these people with diagnosed epilepsy talk about their seizures. I'm like, this makes so much more sense than what they were arguing in court.
To me, this is so enlightening because yes, now I'm confirming in my mind, I don't know if this is accurate, but I'm confirming people can do things. The defense made it seem like you can do automatic small movements like swallowing and chewing. But I'm looking online and people are folding clothes in the shower. I think that's one thing. I do think that the prosecutors, I don't know if it's her background being Hmong. I don't know if it's her socioeconomic status, but-
I think that they just threw whatever would stick. I don't think that they really cared for a fair trial to bring in the pediatrician like that to really make the whole spirits and possession things as weird as they did. It's very confusing. Yeah. So right now they're, they're just waiting. Yeah. They're just waiting to see what happens to see what the prosecutors decide to do with her trial.
Wow. What are your thoughts? I'd love to know. I'd love to know if you're Hmong and just more context of seizures and spirits and maybe you have a better understanding of, oh, I think she was actually just using it as verbiage or no, some people genuinely see and believe and or if you have epilepsy, is this something that can happen? I mean, clearly something happened though in those 11 minutes. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. Please be safe and I'll see you in the next one.
