A woman who was experiencing “spiritual delusion” and a mental health crisis threw her 4-year-old son into an Ohio lake where he apparently drowned on Saturday, around the same time that her husband — the boy’s father — died after jumping in the water, the authorities said.
The woman, whom the authorities did not name, is expected to be charged with aggravated murder in her son’s death, which occurred on Saturday in Atwood Lake, a reservoir about 25 miles southeast of Canton, Ohio.
The mother was transferred on Monday to a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation, Orvis L. Campbell, the Tuscarawas County sheriff, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Investigators began untangling the narrative on Saturday morning, after the woman drove a golf cart carrying the couple’s three teenage children into the lake. Bystanders initially reported that it appeared to be an accident.
But when investigators started to interview the children and their mother, they said, it became clear that it was intentional. The woman’s behavior and statements to investigators raised alarm about two other family members who were missing, the authorities said. She was singing when emergency responders arrived at the lake, and she asked them to pray for her, the authorities said.
“There was a pretty immediate statement made that she had given her son to the Lord,” Sheriff Campbell said at a news conference on Monday.
The woman told the authorities that on Friday she turned 40, a number that she said is frequently mentioned in the Bible and is associated with judgment and purification.
“She did think the world was coming to an end,” Sheriff Campbell said on Tuesday.
The family, who are Amish and live in Holmes County, Ohio, had been staying at the lake in a recreational vehicle when the episode occurred, the authorities said.
The Tuscarawas County coroner identified the 4-year-old as Vincen Miller and his father as Marcus J. Miller, 45.
It was not clear whether Mr. Miller had intentionally drowned. Autopsy results for him and his son were still pending on Tuesday.
Around 6 p.m. on Saturday, divers found Vincen at the bottom of the lake, about 10 feet from a dock where investigators said his mother told them she had brought him that morning.
“She states that she went to the dock, and that she threw the 4-year-old in because that’s what she needed to do as an offering to God,” Sheriff Campbell said during the news conference.
It was not immediately clear whether the woman had a lawyer.
The couple’s three other children — a 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons — are in the care of other family members, the authorities said.
In a joint statement issued through the sheriff’s office, the family and the Old Order Amish Church, which the Millers belonged to, said that the events of the past weekend did not reflect their teachings and were a result of mental illness.
“The ministry and extended family had been walking with them through their challenges, and they had also received professional help in the past,” the statement said.
Sheriff Campbell said Mr. Miller’s wife told them that around 1:15 a.m. on Saturday, she and her husband went in the lake as part of a spiritual test, and that “God told her to allow herself to be swallowed by a fish.”
“They jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things, things to prove their worthiness to God, to show their faith as complete, and they didn’t do very well in those,” the sheriff said.
Divers found Mr. Miller’s body around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, about 53 yards from the dock, according to Sheriff Campbell, who said that Mr. Miller had returned to the lake around dawn on Saturday to swim to a sandbar.
Before the golf cart crash, bystanders grew alarmed when they saw the woman and her three teenage children praying intently with their heads touching near a kayak launch by the lake, the authorities said.
“She was clearly in mental crisis, no doubt about it,” Sheriff Campbell said. “It just simply manifests itself in what we call a spiritual delusion.”
At 10:39 a.m. on Saturday, emergency responders received a call that the woman and the three teenagers had driven into the lake, according to Sheriff Campbell, who said that the woman had been driving erratically before the crash.
“There were actually people, according to witnesses, chasing the lady, the golf cart, through the grass,” Sheriff Campbell said, “yelling at her to hit the brakes because they thought it was careening out of control.”
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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