Jahi McMath Laid to Rest

July 6, 2018, Jahi McMath was laid to rest in Oakland, California. I'm not sure if anyone remember, but she's the young girl who case had been at the center of a national debate over brain death since the mother refused to remove her daughter from life support. On Dec. 9, 2013, McMath went to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland for a complex nose and throat surgery. Doctors said she had irreversible brain damage from a lack of oxygen and suffered cardiac arrest. A coroner in California signed a death certificate the following month.

McMath’s family gained custody of the girl’s body in 2014 and moved her to New Jersey, the only state in the U.S. with a law that prohibits doctors from removing brain-dead patients from ventilators over families’ religious objections.

"Jahi wasn't brain dead or any kind of dead," Winkfield said. "She was a girl with a brain injury and she deserved to be cared for like any other child who had a brain injury."

Winkfield acknowledged her daughter's dire medical condition but said her Christian beliefs compelled her to fight for care because the girl occasionally showed physical signs of life by twitching her finger or wiggling her toe.

The death certificate in New Jersey listed the cause of death as bleeding.

"I’m devastated about losing my daughter," Winkfield told the Bay Area News Group. "Everything I did revolved around Jahi."