Cabazon Couple Could Spend Their Life Behind Bars For Killing Daughter

A Cabazon couple who stood by and watched as their diabetic daughter’s condition worsened until she slipped into an ultimately fatal coma were sentenced this afternoon to 15- and 17-year-to-life prison terms.

Gregory Lee Latham, 63, received the longer sentence for the April 2006 death of his oldest child, Nanette, while his wife, Yvonne Dee Latham, 53, who had one less charge against her, received the lower term.

“It’s a very, very sad case for everyone involved,” said Riverside County Superior Court Judge Raymond Youngquist. “And it didn’t have to happen. The time was there to alleviate the situation and take care of the victim.”

The Lathams were convicted March 24 of second-degree murder, child endangerment and a sentence-enhancing allegation of corporal injury to a child resulting in death.

Gregory Latham was additionally convicted of furnishing illegal drugs to a minor.

The defendants’ 17-year-old daughter suffered complications related to diabetic ketoacidosis — a life-threatening condition brought on by a shortage of insulin — and slipped into a vegetative state from which she never emerged.

According to trial testimony, the couple did nothing as their daughter’s condition deteriorated over a five-day span, during which she lost the ability to eat, walk, or even hold her head up, wasting away in the family’s dilapidated trailer.

Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky said two neighbors told the Lathams their daughter needed medical attention, but the couple dismissed their concerns.

Strunsky argued there was no excuse for the defendants’ inaction, given that barely five years earlier, Nanette had suffered a similar episode and was rushed to a Moreno Valley hospital, where she recovered and staff instructed her parents on how to spot warning signs in the future.

While the girl’s health collapsed in 2006, Gregory Latham sat idly by, drinking beer, Strunsky said.

He said Yvonne Latham refused to act until it appeared her daughter was no longer breathing, at which point the woman called 911 in a panic.

The teen was brain-dead when she reached Loma Linda University Medical Center, where she died a few days later.

Deputy Public Defender O.G. Magno said Gregory Latham, himself a diabetic, thought he knew how to treat his daughter but was ill-prepared because of his “limited intellectual ability.”

Both Magno and Victor Marshall, Yvonne Latham’s attorney, told jurors that the defendants loved their daughter, who was self-reliant and somewhat “controlling,” adamantly refusing to go to the hospital.