15-Pound Teen Dies; Mother Held

A woman was jailed on suspicion of child neglect after bringing her emaciated 15-year-old daughter to an emergency room, where the girl was pronounced dead. Officials said she weighed barely 15 pounds.

Karen Kuffer, 50, was in the Rock County jail Friday pending a court hearing, said police Chief George Brunner.

The woman brought her daughter, Kay Kuffer, to Mercy Hospital Wednesday night. The girl was pronounced dead on arrival, Brunner said. Hospital officials told police the girl, who suffered from cerebral palsy, weighed 15 pounds, 1 ounce.

Susan Nitzke, an associate professor of nutritional science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the child’s weight was hard to believe.

“I said, ‘Somebody must have made a mistake,’ ” Nitzke said. “That’s definitely just an amazingly low body weight for someone of that age.”

The mother was grieving and upset, said attorney Guy Taylor, who was representing Kuffer.

“We had a situation with an invalid who was being cared for in a loving family that did the best they could,” Taylor said.

Eunice Kuffer, the girl’s grandmother, said she was about the size of a 6-year-old child. For a 6-year-old, the low end of normal weight is about 35 pounds, Nitzke said. For a 15-year-old that weight is about 85 pounds.

Kuffer said nurses came to visit the girl in the mid-1980s but stopped when her mother decided to stop taking her to the doctor. The girl was fed regularly, the grandmother said.

She said her granddaughter’s health began to deteriorate last month. In the days before her death, the girl would not eat more than a few teaspoons of food, she said.

Police said the mother told them the girl never weighed more than 23 pounds.